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Galaxy 

SCIENCE FICTION 



i 



JULY 1951 

ANC 




SCIENCE FICTION 



Edilor-in-Chief 

VERA CERUTTI 

Editor H. L. GOLD 

Arf Director 

W. I. VAN DER POEM. 

Advertising Manager 

GENE MARTINAT 

Circulation Manager 

FREDERICK ALLARDT 



July, 1951 



Vol. 2, No. 4 




Cover by 

WILLER 

Illustrating 

JULY 4th ON TITAN 

GALAXY Science Fiction 

is published monthly by 
World Editions, Jnc, Main 

offices: 105 West loth St., 
New York 18, N. Y. 3.'»c 
per copy. Subscriptions: 
(12 copies) $3..">u per year 
in the United States, 
Canada, Mexico, South and 
Central America and U.S. 
Possessions. Elsewhc re 
$4.50. Entered as second- 
class matter at the Post 
Office, New York. N. Y. 
Copyright, 1951, by World 
Editions, Inc. President: 
George A. (iotfnial. Vice- 
President : Marco I.omhi. 
Secretary and Treasurers 
Anne Swenda. All rights, 

including translation, 

reserved. All material sub- 
mitted must be accom- 
panied by self-addressed 
stamped envelopes. The 
publisher assumes no re- 
sponsibility for unsolicited 
material. All stories print- 
ed in this magazine are 

fiction, and any similarity 

between characters and 
actual persons is coinci- 
dental. 



.173 



CONTENTS 



NOVELETS 



VENUS IS A MAN'S WORLD 

by William Tenn 3 

APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 

by Fritz Leiber 134 

SHORT STORIES 

COMMON DENOMINATOR 

by John D. MacDonald 21 

SYNDROME JOHNNY 

by Charles Dye 30 

PEN PAL 

by Milton Lesser 120 

BOOK-LENGTH SERIAL— Conclusion 



MARS CHILD 



by Cyril Judd 44 



FEATURES 

EDITORIAL 



by H. L Gold 1 



GALAXY'S FIVE STAR SHELF 

by Groff Conklin 1 1 6 

Next issue at your newsstand about July 15 



Printed in Ihe U. S. A. 



Reg. U. S. Pat. OH. 



Getting Personal 



ONE of the most common re- 
quests from readers is for 
vital data on their favorite 
writers. Biography, though, should 
be mechanical, a suggestion that au- 
thoritarians ought to adopt gladly. 

The trouble is that writers, like 
shoemakers, butchers, drug clerks, 

come in all sizes, shapes, ages, 

sexes, places of birth, education, 

marital status, number of begats 

This is sheer confusion. Anyone 
who served in the Army can tell you 
its great advantage over civilian 
life — -at a single glance, you can 
tell a stranger's rank, branch, 
length of service, pay. 

The trouble is that you can stand 
on the toes of your favorite writer 
in a bus, accidentally spill your 
sod j over him at a bar, or refuse 
him credit, and not know who — 
or what, for that matter — he is. 
In a nice, ruthless authoritarian so- 
ciety, this wouldn't be true. Here's 
how it might work: 
• Uniform, According to income, 
this should range from overalls to 
cutaway, which must be worn at 
all times except in privacy. Writers 
should wear traditional flowing ties 
and velvet jackets, topped off by a 
green eyeshade, instead of a beret, 
to distinguish them from artists. 



• Insignia. More than one seems 
to be necessary. A writer in the up- 
per brackets can wear applicjued 
dollar signs on one lapel, and a 
tasteful typewriter fnsigne on the 
other, with crossed pens reserved 
lor poets; miniature rejection slips, 
of course, for beginners. 

• Hasbmarks. Not; using the 
Army's fogey stripes on sleeves to 
indicate length of service would be 
mere obstinacy; it is, after all, the 
easiest and best identification. 
Bronze stripes for single years; sil- 
ver for five; gold for decades. Com- 
pulsory retirement after thirty 
years, except in national or edi- 
torial emergency. 

• Pay. The equitable way to de- 
termine this is by length of service 
and not ability or popularity, just 
as in the Army. There could be ef- 
ficiency tests, following the Army's 
procedure; the difference would be 
that it's not who you know, it's 
whom. Base pay must be on a word 
rate, but with minimum and maxi- 
mum production, which should be a 
relief for the public. 

• DogLiggt/ig. No actual dogtags 
need be issued, but serial num- 
bers are absolutely necessary, to be 
placed after an author's name — and 
rank in the profession — at the be- 



GETTING PERSONAL 



1 



ginning of a story. A reader see- 
ing Capt. Something, 59-18M10S1- 
NY4NMl9-<OS4BA would know 
immediately that Author Something 
is five feet nine, weighs 180, is mar- 
ried ten years, has one son; has 
lived in New York four years, was 
born in New Mexico in 1919, went 
to Ohio State long enough to get 
a B.A. Being a captain, the au- 
thor would, of course, have served 
between ten and twelve years and 
sold five novels and about 300 
stories. With every upgrading, au- 
thors receive new ranks, but retain 
serial numbers. 

• Trainings Uniformity is badly 
needed here. Since most writers 
work as busboy, numbers runner, 
olive stuffer, floor scraper, deck- 
hand, marijuana salesman, before 
selling enough fiction to live on, 
all writers should be required to go 
through the same jobs. It would 
eliminate the classified ad effect of 
most writers* biographies, yet would 
be taken for granted, thus retain- 
ing the romantic nature of the 
art. *■ 

IN CONTRAST to the simplicity 
of the foregoing, consider the 

sprawling effect of even these brief 

notes : 

• Judith Merril (the Judd of Cyril 
Judd) is something over 21 but 
under 30; married lo Frederik Pohl, 
the literary agent; has two daugh- 
ters; is moving from New York to 
a newly acquired house in Red 
Bank, N. J.; edited for Bantam 



Books, now writes, housekeeps full 

— she says she means full — tim 
is better than medium tall, dark, 
and her friends consider her at- 

tractive. 

• C. M. Kornbluth (the Cyril of 
Cyril Judd) is 28; married to a fine 
ceramkist; no children; lives in 
Chicago; where he heads Trans- 
radio Press, for which he writes 
15,000 words a day and then comes 
home and writes science fiction; is 
medium height, a bit more than 
medium weight; has a peering, 
severe look and grimly saves all 
his humor for his stories; is con- 
sidered attractive mainly by editors. 

• William Tenn is 32, unmarried, 
no children; lives in New York; is 
five or six feet tall, weighs one or 
two hundred pounds; dark, eye- 
glassed; lavishes his humor in con- 
versation, fiction, letters; is never 
home, but doesn't go anywhere; 
can't hold still long enough to be 
considered attractive by anyone. 

• Fritz Leiber is 40, married, one 
son; lives in Chicago; assistant edi- 
tor for Science Digest; is six or 
seven feet tall, weighs two or three 
hundred pounds; son of famed 
Shakespearean actor, looks like one 
himself; claims to have refused a 
drink once; is considered hand- 
some only by women. 

All this could have been com- 
pressed into title and serial number. 

Unfortunately, we would be some- 
what compressed, too, in the proc- 
ess. Maybe it's better this way. 

_H. I~ GOLD 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 




VENUS 

is a man's world 



BY WILLIAM TENN 




VE always said that even ff 
Sis is seven years older than 
me — and a girl besides — she 
don't always know what's best. Put 
me on a spaceship jam-packed with 
three hundred females just aching 
to get themselves husbands in the 
one place they're still to be had 
— the planet Venus — and you 
know I'll be in trouble. 

Bad trouble. With the law, 
which is the worst a boy can get 
into. , 

Twenty minutes after we lifted 
from the Sahara Spaceport, I 

wriggled- out of my acceleration 
hammock and started for the door 
of our cabin. 

"Now you be careful, Ferdi- 
nand," Sis called after me as she 
opened a book called Family Prob- 

Illustrated by GENE FAWCETTE 



Actually, there wouldn't be too much difference if women took 
over the Earth altogether. But not for some men and most boys! 



VENUS IS A MAN'S WORLD 



Urns of the Frontier Woman. "Re- 
member you're a nice boy. Don't 
make me ashamed of you." 

I tore down the corridor. Most 
of the cabins had purple lights on 
in front of the doors, showing that 
the girls were still inside their 
hammocks. That meant only the 
ship's crew was up and about. 
Ship's crews are men; women are 
too busy with important things like 
government to run ships. I felt free 
all over — and happy. Now was my 
chance to really see the Eleanor 
Roosevelt! 

IT WAS hard to believe I was 
traveling in space at last. Ahead 
and behind me, all the way up to 
where the companionway curved in 
out of sight, there was nothing but 
smooth black wall and smooth 
white doors — on and on and on. 
Gee, I thought excitedly, this is 
one big ship! 

Of course, every once in a while 
I would run across a big scene of 
stars in the void set in the wall; 
but they were only pictures. Noth- 
ing that gave the feel "of great 
empty space like I'd read about in 
The Soy Rocketeers, no portholes* 
no visiplates, nothing. 

So when I came to the cross- 
way, I stopped for a second, then 
turned left. To the right, see, there 
was Deck Four, then Deck Three, 
leading inward past the engine 
fo'c'sle to the main jets and the 
grav helix going purr-purr-purrty- 
purr in the comforting way big 



machinery has when it's happy and 
oiled. But to the left, the crossway 
led all the way to the outside level 
which ran just under the hull. 
There were portholes on the hull. 

I'd studied all that out in our 
cabin, long before we'd lifted, on 
the transparent model of the ship 
hanging like a big cigar from the 
ceiling. Sis had studied it too, but 
she was looking for places like the 
dining salon and the library and 
Lifeboat 68 where we should go 
in case of emergency. I looked for 
the important things. 

As I trotted along the crossway, 
I sort of wished that Sis hadn't de- 
cided to go after a husband on a 
luxury liner. On a cargo ship, now, 
I'd be climbing from deck to deck 
on a ladder instead of having grav- 
ity underfoot all the time just like 
I was home on the bottom of the 
Gulf of Mexico. But women al- 
ways know what's right, and a boy 
can only make faces and do what 
they say, same as the men have to 
do. 

Still, it was pretty exciting to 
press my nose against the slots in 
the wall and see the sliding panels 
that could come charging out and 
block the crossway into an airtight 
fit in case a meteor or something 
smashed into the ship. And all 
along there were glass cases with 
spacesuits standing in them, like 
those knights they used to have 
back in the Middle Ages. 

"In the event of disaster affect- 
ing the oxygen content of com- 










GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



[union way," they had the words 
etched into the glass, "break glass 
with hammer upon wall, remove 
spacesuit and proceed to don it in 
the following fashion. " 

I read the "following fashion" 
until I knew it by heart. Boy, I 
said to myself, / hope we have that 
kind of disaster. Vd sure like to 
get into one of those! Bet it would 
be more fun than those diving suits 
hack in Undersea! 

And all the time I was alone. 
That was the best part. 



T 



ill I'M I passed Deck Twelve 
and there was a big sign. "No- 
lice! Passengers not permitted past 
this point!" A big sign in red. 

1 peeked around the torner. I 
knew it — the next deck was the 
hull. I could see the portholes. 
Every twelve feet, they were, filled 
with the velvet of space and the 
dancing of more stars than I'd ever 
dreamed existed in the Universe. 

There wasn't anyone on the 
deck, as far as I could see. And 
[Ins distance from the grav helix, 
the ship seemed mighty quiet and 
lonely. If I just took one quick 
look . . . 

But I thought of what Sis would 

*ay and I turned around obedient- 
ly. Then I saw the big red sign 
again. "Passengers not permit- 
ted— " 

Well! Didn't I know from my 
civics class that only women could 
be Earth Citizens these days? Sure, 
ever since the Male Dcsuffragc Act. 



And didn't I know that you had 
to be a citizen of a planet in order 
to get an interplanetary passport? 
Sis had explained it all to mc in 
the careful, patient way she always 
talks politics and things like that 
to men. 

"Technically, Ferdinand, I'm the 
only passenger in our family. You 
can't be one, because, not being a 
citizen, you can't acquire an Earth 
Passport. However, you'll be going 
to Venus on the strength of this 
clause — 'Miss Evelyn Sparling and 
all dependent male members of 
Family, this number not to exceed 
the registered quota of sub-regula- 
tions pertaining' — an^l so on. I 

want you to understand these mat- 
ters, so that you will grow into a 
man who takes an active interest 
in world affairs. No matter what 
you hear, women really like and 
appreciate such men." 

Of course, I never pay much 

attention to Sis when she says such 
dumb things. I'm old enough, I 
guess, to know that it isn't what 
Women like and appreciate tli 
counts when it comes to people 
etting married. If it were, Sis and 

three hundred other pretty girls 

like her wouldn't be on their way 
to Venus to hook husbands. 

Still, if I wasn't a passenger, the 
sign didn't have anything to do 
with mc. I knew what Sis could 
say to that , but at least it was an 
argument I. could use if it ever 
came up. So I broke the law. 

I was glad I did. The stars were 



VENUS IS A MANS WORLD 



exciting enough, but away off to 
the left, about five times as big as 
I'd ever seen it, except in the 
movies, was the Moon, a great blob 
of gray and white pockmarks hold- 
ing off the black of space. I was 
hoping to see the Earth, but I fig- 
ured it must be on the other side 
of the ship or behind us. I pressed 
my nose against the port and saw 
the tiny flicker of a spaceliner tak- 
ing off, Marsbound. I wished I 
was on that one! 

Then I noticed, a little farther 
down the companionway, a stretch- 
of blank wall where there should 
have been portholes. High up on 
the wall in glowing red letters 
were the words, "Lifeboat 47. 
Passengers : Thirty-two. Crew ; 
Eleven, Unauthorized personnel 
keep away!" 

Another one of those signs. 

I CREPT up to the porthole near- 
est it and could just 'barely make 
out the stern jets where it was plas- 
tered against the hull. Then I 
walked under the sign and tried to 
figure the way you were supposed 
to get into it. There was a very 
thin line going around in a big 
circle that I knew must be the door. 
But I couldn't see any knobs or 
switches to open it with. Not even 
a button you could press. 

That meant it was a sonic lock 
like the kind we had on the outer 
keeps back home in Undersea! But 
knock or voice? I tried the two 
knock combinations I knew, and 



nothing happened. I only remem- 
bered one voice key — might as well 
see if that's it, I figured. 

* 'Twenty, Twenty-three. Open 
Sesame." 

For a second, I thought I'd hit 
it just right out of all the million 
possible combinations — The door 
clicked inward toward a black hole, 
and a hairy hand as broad as my 
shoulders shot out of the hole. It 
closed around my throat and 
plucked me inside as if I'd been a 
baby sardine. 

I bounced once on the hard life- 
boat floor. Before I got my breath 
and sat up, the door had been shut 
again. When the light came on, I 
found myself staring up the muzzle 
oi a highly polished blaster and 
into the cold blue eyes of the big- 
gest man I'd ever seen. 

He was wearing a one-piece suit 
made of some scaly green stuff that 
looked hard and soft at the same 
time. 

His boots were made of it too, 
and so was the hood hanging down 
his back. 

And his face was brown. Not- 
just ordinary tan, you understand, 
but the deep, dark, burned-all-the- 
way-in brown I'd seen on the life- 
guards in New Orleans whenever 
we took a surface vacation — the 
kind of tan that comes from day 
after broiling day under a really 
hot Sun. His hair looked as if it 
had once been blond, but now 
there were just long combed-out 
waves with a yellowish tinge that 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



boiled all the V down to his 

shoulders. 

I hadn't seen hair like that on 
a mm except maybe in history 
boo!^ ; every man I'd ever known 
had his hair cropped in the fash- 
ionable soup-bowl style. I was star- 
ing at his hair, almost forgetting 
about the blaster which I knew it 
was , i gainst the law ior him to have 
at all, when I suddenly got scared 

right through. 

His eyes. 

They didn't blink and there 
seemed to be no expression around 
them. Just coldn Maybe it was 
the kind of clothes he was wearing 
that did it, but all of a sudden I 
was reminded of a crocodile I'd 
seen in a surface zoo that had 
stared quietly at me for twenty 

minutes until it opened two long 
tooth-studded jaws. 

'-Green shatas!" he said sudden- 
ly. "Only a tadpole. I must be get- 
ting jumpy enough to splash." 

Then he shoved the blaster away 
in a holster made of the same scaly 
leather, crossed his arms on h-is 
chest and began to study me. I 
grunted to my feet, feeling a lot 
better. The coldness had gone out 
of his eyes. 

I held out my hand the way Sis 
had taught me. "My name is Ferdi- 
nand Sparling. I'm very pleased to 
meet you, Mr. — .Mr. — " 

''Hope for your sake," he said 
to me, "that you aren't what you 
seem — tadpole brother to one of 
them husbandless anura." 



''What? 1 ' 
• "A 'nuran is a female lookin 
to nest. Anura is a herd of same. 
Come from Flatfolk ways." 

"Flatfolk are the Venusian na- 
tives, aren't they? Are you 
Venusian? What part of Venus do 
you come from? Why did you say 
you hope — M 

He chuckled and swung me up 
into one of the bunks that lined tlv 
lifeboat. "Questions you ask," he 
said in his soft voice. "Venus is a 
sharp enough place for a dryhorn, 
let alone a tadpole dryhorn with a 
boss-minded sister." 

'Tm not a dryleg," I told him 
proudly. "II re from Undersea/' 

"Dryhorn, I said, not dryleg. 
And what's Undersea?" 

"Well, in Undersea we called 
foreigners and newcomers dryleg 
Just like on Venus, I guess, you 
ill them dryhorns." And then I 
told him how Undersea had been 
built on the bottom of the Gulf 
of Mexico, when the mineral re- 
sources of the land began to gi\ 
out and engineers figured that a 
lot could still be reached from tb 
sea bottoms. 

HE NODDED. He'd heard 
about the sea-bottom minin 
cities that were bubbling under pro- 
tective domes in every one of the 
Earths oceans just about the same- 
time settlements were springing up 
on the planets. 

He looked impressed when I 
told him about Mom and Pop b 



VENUS IS A MAN'S WORLD 



ing one of the first couples to get 

married in Undersea. He looked 
thoughtful when I told him how 
Sis and I had been born there and 

spent half our childhood listening 
to the pressure pumps. He raised 
his eyebrows and looked disgusted 

when I told how Mom, as Under- 
sea representative on the World 
Council, had been one of the 
framers of the Male DesufFrage Act 
after the Third Atomic War had 
resulted in the Maternal Revolu- 
tion. 

HE ALMOST squeezed my arm 
when I got to the time Mom 
and Pop were blown up in a surfac- 
ing boat. 

"Well, after the funeral, there 
was a little money, so Sis decided 
we might as well use it to migrate. 
There was no future for her on 
Earth, she figured. You know,, the 
three-out-of-four." 

"How's that? 1 * 

"The three-out-of-four. No more 
than three women out of every 
four on Earth can expect to find 
husbands. Not enough men to go 
around. Way back in the Twen- 
tieth Century, it began to be fell, 
Sis says, what with the wars and 
all. Then the wars went on and a 
lot more men began to die or get 
no good from the radioactivity. 

Then the best men went to the 
planets, Sis says, until by now even 
if a woman can scrounge a per- 
sonal husband, he's not much to 
boast about/' 



The stranger nodded violently. 
"Not on Earth, he isn't. Those 
busybody anura make sure of that. 
What a place! Suffering gridniks, 

I had a bellyful!" 

He told me about it. Women 
were scarce on Venus, and he 
hadn't been able to find any who 
were willing to come out to his 
lonely little islands; he had de- 
Jed to go to Earth where there 
was supposed to be a surplus. Nat- 
urally, having been born and 
brought up on a very primitive 
planet, he didn't know "it's a 
woman's world," like the older 
boys in school used to say. 

The moment he landed on Earth 
he was in trouble. He didn't know 
he had to register at a government- 
operated hotel for transient males; 
he threw a bartender through a 
thick plastic "window for saying 
something nasty about the length 

of his hair; and imagine! — he not 
only resisted arrest, resulting in 

three hospitalized' policemen, but 
lie sasscd the judge in open court! 

"Told me a man wasn't sup- 
posed to say anything except 
through female attorneys. Told her 
that where J came from, a njan 
spoke his piece when he'd a mind 
to, and his woman walked by his 
side." 

"What happened?" 
breathlessly. 

"Oh, Guilty of This and Con- 
tempt of That. That 
brinosaur took my last 



I asked 



blown-up 
munit for 



fines, then explained that she was 



8 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 




remitting the rest because I was a 
foreigner and uneducated." His 
eyes grew dark for a moment He 
chuckled again. "But I wasn't go- 
ing to serve all those fancy little 
prison sentences. Forcible Citizen- 
ship Indoctrination, they call it? 
Shook the dead -dry dust of the mis- 
begotten, God forsaken mother 
world from my feet forever. The 
women on it deserve their men. 
My pockets were folded from the 
fines, and the paddlefeet were 
looking for me so close I didn't 
dare radio for more munit. So I 
stowed away." 

FOR a moment, I didn't under- 
stand him. When I did, I was 
almost ill. "Y-you mean," I choked, 
"th-that you're b-breaking the law 
right now? And Fm with you 
while you're doing it?" 

He leaned over the edge of the 
bunk and starbd at me very serious- 
ly. "What breed of tadpole are 
they turning out these days ? Be- 
sides, what business do you have 
this close to the hull?" 

After a moment of sober reflec- 
tion, I nodded. "You're right. I've 
also become a male outside the 
law. We're in this together." 

He guffawed. Then he sat up 
and began cleaning his blaster. I 
found .myself drawn to the bright 
killer-tube with exactly the fascina- 
tion Sis insists such things have 
always had for men. 

"Ferdinand your label? That's 
not right for a sprouting tadpole. 



Til call you Ford. My name's Butt. 
Butt Lee Brown." 

I liked the sound of Ford. "Is 
Butt a nickname, too?" 

"Yeah. Short for Alberta, but I 
haven't found a man who can draw 
a blaster fast enough to call me 
that. You see, Pop came over in 
the eighties — the big wave of 
immigrants when they evacuated 
Ontario. Named all us boys after 
Canadian provinces. I was the 
youngest, so I got the name they 
were savu g for a girl." 

"You had a lot of biothers, Mr. 
Butt?" 

■ 

He grinned with a mighty set of 
teeth. "Oh, a nestful. Of course, 
they were all killed an the Blue 
Chicago Rising by the MacGregor 
boys — all except me and Saskatche- 
wan. Then Sas and me hunted the 
MacGregors down. Took a heap of 
time; we didn't float Jock Mac- 
Gregor's ugly face down the Tus- 
cany till both of us were pretty 
near grown up." 

I walked up close to where I 
cou^d see the tiny bright copper 
coils of the blaster above the firing 
button. "Have you killed a lot of 
men with that, Mr. Butt?" 

"Butt. Just plain Butt to you, 
Ford." He frowned and sighted at 
the light globe. "No more'n twelve 
— not counting five government 
paddlefeet, of course. I'm a peace- 
able planter. Way I figure it, vio- 
lence never accomplishes much 
that's important. My brother Sas, 
now — " 



VENUS IS A MAN'S WORLD 



HE HAD just begun to work 
•into a wonderful anecdote 
about his brother when the dinner 
gong rang. Butt told me to scat. 
He said I was a growing tadpole 
and needed my vitamins. And he 
mentioned, very off-hand, that he 
wouldn't at all object if I brought 
him some fresh fruit. It seemed 
there was nothing but processed 
foods in the lifeboat and Butt was 
used to a farmer's diet. 

Trouble was, he was a special 
kind of farmer. Ordinary fruit 
would have been pretty easy to 
sneak into my pockets at meals. I 
even found a way to handle the 
kelp and giant watercress Mr. 
Brown liked, but things like sea- 
weed salt and Venusian mud- 
grapes just had too strong a smell. 
Twice, the mechanical hamper re- 
cused to accept imy jacket for laun- 
dering and I had to wash it myself. 
But I learned so many wonderful 
things about Venus every time I 
visited that stowaway ... 

I learned three wild-wave songs 
of the Flatfolk and what it is that 
the native Venusians hate so much; 
I learned how you tell the differ- 
ence between a lousy government 
paddlefoot from New Kalamazoo 
and the slaptoc slinker who is the 
planter's friend. After a lot of 
begging, Butt Lee Brown explained 
the workings of his blaster, ex- 
plained it so carefully that I could 
name every part and tell what it 
did from the tiny round electrodes 
to the long spirals of transformer. 



"i 



But no matter what, he would never 
let me hold it. 

"Sorry, Ford, old tad," he would 
drawl, spinning around and around 
in the control swivel-chair at the 
nose of the lifeboat. "But way I 

look at it, a man who lets some- 
body else handle his blaster is like 
the giant whose heart was in an 
egg that an enemy found. When 
you've grown enough so's your pop 
feels you ought ,to have a weapon, 
why, then's the time to learn it and 
you might's well learn fast. Before 
then, you're plain too young to be 
even near it. 1 ' 

"I don't have a father to give me 
one when I come of age. I don't 
even have an older brother as head 
of my family like your brother 
Labrador. All I have is Sis. And 

she—" 

"She'll marry some fancy dry- 
horn who's never been farther 
South than the Polar Coast. And 
she'll stay head of the family, if 
I know her breed of green shata. 
Bossy, opinionated. By the way, 
Fordie," he said, rising and stretch- 
ing so the fish-leather bounced and 
rippled off his biceps, "that sister. 
She ever ..." 

And he'd be off again, cross-ex- 
amining me about Evelyn. I sat in 
the swivel chair he'd vacated and 
tried to answer his questions. But 
there was a lot of stuff I didn't 
know. Evelyn was a healthy girl, 
for instance; how healthy, exactly, 
I had no way of finding out. Yes, 
I'd tell him, my aunts on both sides 



JO 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



of my family each had had more 
than the average number of chil- 
dren. No, we'd never done any 
farming to speak of, back in Un- 
dersea, but — yes, I'd guess Evelyn 
knew about as rquch as any girl 
there when it came to diving equip- 
ment and pressure pump regula- 
tion. 

How would I know that stuff 
would lead to trouble for me? 



s 



IS had insisted I come along to 
the geography lecture. Most of 
the other girls who were going to 
Venus for husbands talked to each 
other during the lecture, but not 
my sister! She hung on every 
word, took notes even, and asked 
enough questions to make the per- 
spiring purser really work in those 
orientation periods. 

"I am very sorry, Miss Spar- 
ling," he said with pretty heavy sar- 
casm, "but I cannot remember any 
of the agricultural products of the 
Macro Continent. Since the human 
population is well below one per 
thousand square miles, it can readi- 
ly be understood that the quantity 
of tilled soil, land or sub-surface, 
is so small that — Wait, I remem- 
ber something. The Macro Conti- 
nent exports a fruit though not 
exactly an edible one. The wild 
dunging drug is harvested there by 
criminal speculators. Contrary to 
belief on Earth, the traffic has been 
growing in recent years. In fact — " 

"Pardon me, sir/' I broke in, 
"but doesn't dunging come only 



from Lcif Erickson Island off the 
Moscow Peninsula of the Macro 
Continent? You remember, purser 
— Wang Li's third exploration, 
where he proved the island and 
the peninsula didn't meet for most 
of the year?" 

The purser nodded slowly. "I 
forgot," he admitted. "Sorry, 
ladies, but the boy's right. Please 
make the correction in your notes." 

/But Sis was the only one who 
took notes, and she didn't take that 
one. She stared at me for a mo- 
ment, biting her lower lip thought- 
fully, while ! I got sicker and sicker. 
Then she shut her pad with the 
final gesture of the right hand that 
Mom used to use just before chal- 
lenging the opposition to come 
right down on the Council floor 
and debate it out with her. 

"Ferdinand," Sis said, "let's go 
back to our cabin." 

The moment she sat mc down 
and walked slowly around me, I 
knew I was in for it. 'Tve been 

reading up on Venusian geography 
in the shipis library," I told her 
in a hurry. 

"No doubt," she said drily. She 
shook her night-black hair out. 
"But you aren't going to tell me 
that you read about dunging in the 
ship's library. The books there have 
been censored by a government 
agent of Earth against the possi- 
bility that they might be read by 

susceptible young male minds like 
yours. She would not have allowed 
— this Terran -Agent — " 



VENUS IS A MAN'S WORLD 



11 



"Paddlefoot," I sneered. 

Sis sat down hard in our zoom- 
air chair. "Now that's a term," she 
said carefully, "that is used only 
by Venusian riffraff." 

"They're not!" 

"Not what?" 

"'Riffraff," I had to answer, know- 
ing I was getting in deeper all the 
time and not being able to help it. 
I mustn't give Mr. Brown away! 
"They're trappers and farmers, 
pioneers and explorers, who're 
building Venus. And it takes a real 
man to build on a hot, hungry hell 
like Venus." 

"Does it, now?" she said, look- 
ing at me as if I were beginning 
to grow a second pair of ears. "Tell 
me more." 

"You can't have meek, law-abid- 
ing, women-ruled men when you 
start -civilization on a new planet. 
You've got to have men who aren't 
afraid to .make their own law if 
necessary — with their own guns. 

That's where law begins; the books 
get written up later." 

"You're going to tell, Ferdinand, 
what evil, criminal male is speak- 
ing through your mouth!" 

"Nobody!" I insisted. "They're 
my own ideas!" 

•"They are remarkably well-or- 
ganized for a young boy's ideas. A 
boy who, I might add, has previous- 
ly shown a ridiculous but nonethe- 
less entirely masculine boredom 
with political philosophy. I plan to 
have a government career on that 
new planet you talk about, Ferdi- 



nand — after I have found a good, 
steady husband, of course — and I 
don't look forward to a masculin- 
ist radical in the family. Now # 
who has been filling your head 
with all this nonsense?" 

I WAS sweating. Sis has that 
deadly bulldog approach when 
she feels someone is lying. I pulled 
my pulpast handkerchief from my 
pocket to wipe my face. Something 
rattled -to the floor. 

"What -is this picture of me do- 
ing in your pocket, Ferdinand?" 

A trap seemed to be hinging 
noisily into place. "One of the 
passengers wanted to see how you 
looked in a bathing suit." 

"The passengers on this ship are 
all female. I can't imagine any of 
them that curious about my appear- 
ance. Ferdinand, it's a man who has 
been giving you these anti-social 
ideas, isn't it? A war-mongering 
masculinist like all the frustrated 
men who want to engage in gov- 
ernment and don't have the 
vaguest idea how to. Except, of 
course, in their ancient, bloody 
ways. Ferdinand, who has been per- 
verting that sunny and carefree 
soul of yours?" 

"Nobody! Nobody! 1 ' 

"Ferdinand, there's no point in 
lying! I demand — " 

"I told you, Sis. I told you! And 
don't call me Ferdinand. Call me 
Ford." 

"Ford? Ford? Now, you listen 
to me, Ferdinand ..." 



12 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



After that it was ail over but 
the confession- That came in a few 
moments. I couldn't fool Sis. She- 
just knew me too well, I decided 
miserably. Besides, she was a girl. 

All the same, I wouldn't get Mr. 

Butt Lee Brown into trouble if I 
could help it. I made Sis promise 
she wouldn't turn him in if I took 
her to him. And the quick, nodding 
way she said she would made me 
feel just a little better. 

The door opened on the signal, 
"Sesame." When Butt saw some- 
body was with me, he jumped and 
i he ten-inch blaster barrel grew out 
of his fingers. Then he recognized 
Sis from the pictures. 

He stepped to one side and, with 
i he same sweeping gesture, hol- 
stered his blaster and pushed his 

ccn hood off. It was Sis's turn 
to jump when she saw the wild 
mass of hair rolling down his back. 

"An honor, Miss Sparling," he 
said in that rumbly voice. "Please 
come right in. There's a hurry-up 

draft" 

So Sis went in and I followed 
right after her. Mr. Brown closed 
the door. I tried to catch his eye so 
I could give him some kind of 
hint or explanation, but he had 
taken a couple of his big strides and 
was in the control section with Sis 
She didn't give ground, though; 
I'll say that for her. She only came 

to his chest, but she had her .inns 
- rossed sternly. 

"First, Mr. Brown," she began, 
like talking to a cluck of a kid in 



class, "you realize that you are not 
only committing the political crime 
of traveling without a visa, and the 
criminal one of stowing away with- 
out paying your fare, but the moral 
delinquenq* of consuming stores 
intended for the personnel of this 
ship solely in emergency?" 

HE OPENED his mouth to its 
maximum width and raised 
an enormous hand. Then he let the 

air out and dropped his arm. 

"J take it you either have no 
defense or care to make none/' Sis 
added caustically. 

Butt laughed slowly and care- 
fully as if he were going over each 
word. "Wonder if all the anura 
talk like that. And you want to 
foul up Venus." 

"We haven't done so badly on 
Earth, after the mess you men made 
of politics. It needed a revolution 
of the mothers before — M 

"Needed nothing. Everyone 
wanted peace. Earth is a weary old 
world." 

"It's a world of strong moral 
fiber compared to yours, Mr. Al- 
berta Lee Brown." Hearing his 

rightful name made him move sud- 
denly and tower over her. Sis said 
with a certain amount of hurry and 
change of tone, "What do you 
have to say about stowing away 
and using up lifeboat stores?" 

HE COCKED his head and con- 
sidered a moment. "Look," 
he said finally, ''I have more than 



VENUS IS A MANS WORLD 



13 



enough munit to pay for round 
trip tickets, but I couldn't get a re- 
turn visa because of that brinosaur 
judge and all the charges she bung 
on me. Had to stow away. Picked 
the Eleanor Roosevelt because a 
couple of the boys in the crew arc 
friends of mine and they were -will- 
ing to help. But this lifeboat — 
don't you know that every passen- 
ger ship carries four times as many 
lifeboats as it needs? Not to men- 
tion the food I didn't eat because 
it .stuck in my throat ?" 

"Yes," she said bitterly. "You 
had this boy steal fresh fruit for 
you. I suppose you didn't know 
that under space regulations that 
makes him equally guilty?" 

"No, Sis, he didn't. " I was be- 
ginning to argue. "All he want- 
ed—" 

"Sure I knew. Also know that 
if I'm picked up as a stowaway, I'll 
be sent back to Earth to serve out 
those fancy little sentences." 

"Well, you're guilty of them, 
aren't you?" 

He waved his hinds at her im- 
patiently. "I'm not talking law 
female; I'm talking sense. Listen ! 

I'm in trouble because I went to 

Earth to look for a wife. You're 

• standing here right now because 

you're on your way to Venus for 

a husband. So let's." 

Sis actually staggered back. 
"Let's? Let's what? Are — arc you 
daring to suggest that — that — " 

"Now, Miss Sparling, no hoopla. 
I'm saying let's get married, and 



you know it. You figured out from 
what the boy told you that 1 was 
i hewing on you for a wife. You'i 
healthy and strong, got good 

heredity, you know how to operate 

sub-surface machinery, you've lived 
underwater, and your disposition's 
no worse than most of the anui 
I've sc^ti. Prolific stock, too." 

I was so excited I just had to 
yell: "Gee, Sis, say yes!' 1 

MY SISTER'S voice was si earn- 
ing with scorn. "And whal 
makes you think that I'd consid- 
you a desirable husband?" 

i [e spread his hands genially. 
' 1 ire if you wanted a poodle, 
you're pretty enough to pick one up 
on Earth, Figure if you charge off 
to Venus, you don't want a poodle, 
you want a man. I'm one. I own 
three islands in the Galert an 
Archipelago that'll be good oozing 

mudgrape laud when they' re 

ired. Not to mention the rich 

berzeliot beds offshore. I got no 

bad habits outside of having my 
own way. I'm also passable good- 
looking for a slaptoe planter. Be- 
sides, if you marry me you'll be 
the first mated on this ship — and 

that's a splash most nesting fcmal 

like to nuke." 

There was a longish stretch of 
quiet. Sis stepped back and meas- 
ured him slowly with her eyes; 

there was a lot to look at. lie w 
ed patiently while she covered the 
distance from his peculiar green 
boots to that head of hair. I w 



14 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



so excited I was gulping instead of 
breathing, (Imagine having Butt for 
a brother-in-law and living on a 
wet-plantation in Flatfolk country! 
But then I remembered Sis's 
level head and I didn't have much 
hope any more. 

,0 You know," she began, "there's 

more to marriage than just — " 

"So there is," he cut in. "Well, 
we can try each other for taste." 
And he pulled her in, both of his 
great hands practically covering her 
slim, straight back. 

(Neither of them said anything 
for a bit after he let go. Butt spoke 
up first. 

"Now, me," he said, "I'd vote 
yes." 

Sis ran the tip of her tongue kind 
of delicately from side to side of 
her mouth. Then she stepped back 
slowly and looked at him as if she 
were figuring out how many feet 
high he was. She kept on moving 

backward, tapping her chin, while 

Butt and I got more and more im- 
patient. When she touched the life- 
boat door, she pushed it open and 
jumped out. 

BUTT ran over and looked 
down the crossway. After a 
while, he shut the door and came 
back beside me. "Well," he said, 
swinging to a bunk, "that's sort of 
it." 

''You're better off, Butt," I burst 
out. "You shouldn't have a woman 

like Sis for a wife. She looks small 
and helpless, but don't forget she 



was trained to run an underwater 
city!" 

"Wasn't worrying about that," 
he grinned. et l grew up in the fif- 
teen long years of the Blue 'Chicago 
Rising. Nope." He turned over on 
his back and clicked his teeth at 
the ceiling. "Think we'd have nest- 
ed out nicely." 

I hitched myself up to him and 
we sat on the bunk, glooming away 
at each other. Then we heard the 
tramp of feet in the crossway. 

Butt swung down and headed 
for the control compartment in the 
nose of the lifeboat. He had his 
blaster out and was cursing very 
interestingly. I started after him, 
but he picked me up by the seat of 
my jumper and tossed me toward 
the door. The Captain came in and 

tripped over me, 

I got all tangled up in his gold 
braid and million-mile space but- 
tons. When we finally got to our 
feet and sorted out right, he was 
breathing very hard. The Captain 
was a round little man with a 
plump, golden face and a very 
scared look on it. He humphed at 
me, just the way Sis does, and 
lifted me by the scruff of my neck. 
The Chief Mate picked me up and 
passed ine to the Second Assistant 
Engineer. 

Sis was there, being held by the 
purser on one side and the Chief 
Computer's Mate on the other. Be- 
hind them, I could see a flock of 
•wide-eyed female passengers. 

"You cowards!" Sis was raging. 



VENUS IS A MANS WORLD 



15 



"Letting your Captain face a dan- 
gerous outlaw all by himself!" 

"I dunno, Miss Sparling," the 
Computer's Mate said, scratching 
the miniature slide-rule insignia on 
his visor with his free hand. "Tl> 
Old Man would' vc been willing to 
let it go with a log entry, figuring 
the spaceport paddlefeet could pry 
out the stowaway when we landed. 
Bui you had to quote the Mother 
Anita Law at him, and he's in there 
doing his duty. He figures the rest 
of us are family men, too, and 
there's no sense making orphans." 

"You promised, Sis," I told her 
through my teeth. "You promised 
you wouldn't get Butt into trou- 
ble!" 

She tossed her spiral curls at rnc 
and ground a heel into the purser's 
instep. He screwed up his face and 
howled, but he didn't let go of her 
arm. 

"Shush. Ferdinand, this is se- 



nous ! 



It was. I heard the Captain say, 
v I'm not carrying a weapon, 
Brown.*' 

"Then get one/' Butt's low, I.izy 
voice floated out. 

"No, thanks. You're as handy 
with that thing as I am with .1 
Focketfoo&rd." The Captain's words 
got a little fainter as he walked 
forward. Butt growled like a gusher 
about to blow. 

"I'm counting on your being a 
good guy, Brown." The Captain's 
voice quavered just a bit. "I'm 
banking on what I heard about the 



blast-happy Browns every time I 
lifted gravs in New Kalamazoo; 
ihey have a code, they don't burn 

unarmed men." 

JUST about this time, events in 
the lifeboat went down to a 
mumble. The top of my head got 
wet and I looked up. There was 
sweat rolling down the Second 
Assistant's forehead; it converged 
at his nose and bounced off the tip 
in a sizable stream. I twisted out of 
the way. 

"What's happening?" Sis grit- 
ted, straining toward the lock. 

"Butt's trying to decide whether 
he wants him fried or scrambled," 
the Computer's Mate said, pulling 
her back. "Hey, purse, remember 
when the whole family with their 
pop at the head went into Heat- 
wave to argue with Colonel Lec- 
lerc?" 

"Eleven dead, sixty-four in- 
jured," the purser answered me- 
chanically. "And no more army 
stationed south of Icebox." His 
right ear twitched irritably. "But 
what're they saying ?" 

Suddenly we heard. "By author- 
ity vested in me under the Pomona 
College Treaty," the Captain was 
saying very loudly, "I arrest you 
for violation of Articles Sixteen to 
Twenty-one inclusive of the Space- 
Transport Code, and order your 
person and belongings impounded 
for the duration of this voyage as 
set forth in Sections Forty- one and 
Forty-five — " 



l& 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 




"Forty-three. and Forty-five," Sis 
groaned. "Sections forty-three and 
Forty-five, I told him. I even made 
him repeat it after me!" 

M — of the Mother Anita Law, 
SC 2136, Emergency Interplanetary 
Directives." 

WE ALL waited breathlessly 
for Butt's reply. The sec- 
onds ambled on and there was no 
clatter of electrostatic discharge, no 
smell of burning flesh. 

Then we heard some feet walk- 
ing. A big man in a green suit 
swung out into the crossway. That 
was Butt. Behind him came the 
Captain, holding the blaster gin- 
gerly with both hands. Butt had .1 
funny, thoughtful look on his face. 

The girls surged forward when 
they saw him, scattering the crew 
to one side. They were like a school 
of sharks that had just caught sight 
of a dying whale. 



"M-m-m-m! Are all Venusians 

built like that?" 

"Men like that are worth the 
mileage !" 

"J want him!" "Z want him!" If l 
want him!" 

Sis had been let go. She grabbed 
^my free hand and pulled me away. 
She was trying to look only 
annoyed, but her eyes had bright 
little bubbles of fury popping in 
them. 

"The cheap extroverts ! And 
they call themselves responsible 
women!" 

I was angry, too. And I let her 
know, once we were in our cabin. 
"What about that promise, Sis? 
You said you wouldn't turn him 
in. You promised!" 

She stopped walking around the 
room as if she had been expecting 
to get to Venus on foot. "I know 
I did, Ferdinand, but he forced 
me." 



VENUS IS A MAN'S WORLD 



17 



"My name is Ford and I don't 
understand. 

,c Your name is Ferdinand and 
stop trying to act forcefully like a 
girl. It doesn't become you. In just 
a few days, you'll forget all this 
and be your simple, carefree self 
again. I really truly meant to keep 
my word. From what you'd told 
me, Mr. Brown seemed to be a 
fundamentally decent chap despite 
his barbaric notions on equality be- 
tween the sexes — or worse. I was 
positive I could shame him into 
a more rational social behavior and 
make him give himself up. Then 
he— he— " 

She pressed hex fingernails -into 
her palms and let out a long, glar- 
ing sigh at the door. "Then he 
kissed me! Oh, it was a good 
enough kiss — Mr. Brown has evi- 
dently had a varied and colorful 
background — but the galling idiocy 

of the jnan, trying that! tl was just 

getting over the colossal impu- 
dence involved in his proposing 
marriage — as >if he had to bear the 
children! — and was considering the 
offer seriously, on its merits, as one 
should consider all suggestions, 
when he deliberately dropped the 
pretense of reason. He appealed to 
me as most of the savage ancients 
appealed to their women, as an 
emotional machine. Throw the cor- 
rect sexual switches, says this 
theory, and the female- surrenders 
herself ecstatically to the doubtful 
and 'bloody murk of masculine 
plans/' 



THERE was a double knock on 
the door and the Captain 
walked in without waiting for an 
invitation. He was still holding 
Butt's blaster. He pointed it at me. 
"Get your hands up, Ferdinand 
Sparling," he said. 

I did. 

"I hereby order your detention 
for the duration of this voyage, for 
aiding and abetting a stowaway, as 
set forth in Sections Forty-one and 
Forty-five — " 

"Forty-three and 'Forty-five/' Sis 
interrupted him, her eyes getting 
larger and rounder. "But you gave 
me your word of honor that no 
charges would be lodged against 
the boy!" 

"Forty-one and Forty-five," he 
corrected her courteously, still star- 
ing fiercely at me. "I looked it up. 
Of the Anita Mason Law, Emerg- 
ency Interplanetary Directives. That 
was the usual promise one makes 
to an informer, but I made it be- 
fore I knew it was Butt Lee Brown 
you were talking about. I didn't 
want to arrest Butt Lee Brown. 
You forced me. So I'm breaking 
my promise to you, just as, I under- 
stand, you broke your promise to 
your brother. They'll both be 
picked up at New Kalamazoo 
Spaceport and sent Terra ward for 
trial." 

"But I used all of our money to 
buy passage," Sis wailed. 

"And now you'll have to return 
with the boy. Fm sorry, Miss 
Sparling. But as you explained to 



18 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



me, a man who has been honored 
with an important official position 
should stay close to the letter of 
the law for the sake of other men 
who are trying to break down ter- 
restrial anti-male prejudice. Of 
course, there's a way out/' 

"There is? Tell me, please!" 

"Can I lower my hands a min- 
ute?" I asked. 

"No, you can't, son — not accord- 
ing to the armed surveillance pro- 
visions of the Mother Anita Law. 
Miss Sparling, if you'd marry 
Brown — now, now, don't look at 
me like that! — we could let the 
whole matter drop. A shipboard 
wedding and he goes on your pass- 
port as a 'dependent male member 
of family/ which means, so far as 
the law is concerned, that he had 
a' regulation passport from the be- 
ginning of this voyage. .And once 
we touch Veniisian soil he can con- 
tact his bank and pay for passage. 
On the record, no .crime was ever 
committed. He's free, the boy's 
free, and you — " 

" — Are married to an uncombed 
desperado who doesn't know 
enough to sit back and let a woman 
run things. Oh, you should be 
ashamed!" 

THE Captain shrugged and 
spread his arms wide. 
"Perhaps I should be. but that's 
what comes of putting men into re- 
sponsible positions, as you would 
say. See here, Miss Sparling, / 
didn't want to arrest Brown, and, 



if it's at all possible, I'd still pre- 
fer not to. The crew, officers and 
men, all go along with me. We may 
be legal residents of Earth, but our 
work requires us to be on Venus 
several times a year. We don't want 
to be disliked by any members of 
the highly irritable Brown clan or 
its collateral branches. (Butt Lee 
Brown himself, for all of his sav- 
age appearance in your civilized 
eyes, is a man of much influence 
on the Polar Continent. In his own 
bailiwick, the Galertan Archipelago, 
he makes, breaks and occasionally 
readjusts officials. Then there's his 
brother Saskatchewan who consid- 
ers Butt a helpless, put-upon young- 
ster — " 

"Much influence, you say? Mr. 
Brown has?" Sis was suddenly 
thoughtful. 

ff Power 3 actually. The kind a 
strong man usually wields in a 
newly 'settled community. Besides, 
Miss Sparling, you're going to 
Venus for a husband because the 
male-female ratio on Earth is re- 
versed. Well, not only is Butt Lee 
Brown a first class catch, but you 
can't afford to be too particular in 
any case. While you're fairly pretty, 
you won't bring any wealth into a 
marriage and your high degree of 
opinionation is not likely to be 
well- received on a backward, mas- 
culinist world. Then, too, the 
woman-hunger is not so great any 
more, what with the Marie Curie 
and the Fatima having already de- 
posited their cargoes, the Mme. Sun 



VENUS IS A MAN'S WORLD 



19 



Yaf Se?i due to , arrive next 
month . . ," 






SIS nodded to herself, waved the 
door open, and walked out. . 

"Let's hope," H the Captain said. 
"Like any father used to say, a 
man who knows how to handle 
women, how to. get around them 
without their knowing it, doesn't 
need to know anything else in this 
life. J I'm plain wasted in space. 
You can lower your hands now, 
son." 

We sat down and I explained 
the blaster to him. He was very 
interested. He said all Butt had 
told him — in the lifeboat when they 
decided to use my arrest as a club 
over Sis — was to keep the safety 
catch all the way up against his 
thumb. I could see he really had 
been excited about carrying a lethal 
weapon around. He told me that 
back in the old days, captains — sea 
captains, that is — actually had the 
right to keep guns in their cabins 
all the time to put down mutinies 
and other things our ancestors did. 

The telewall flickered, and we 

turned it on. Sis smiled down. 
"(Everything's all right, . Captain. 
Come up and marry us, please." 

"What did you stick him for?" 
he asked. "What was the price?" 

Sis's full lips went thin and hard, 
the way Mom's used to. Then she 
thought better of it and laughed. 
"Mr. Brown is going to see that 
I'm elected sheriff of the Galertan 

Archipelago." 



"And I thought she'd settle for 
a county clerkship!" the Captain 
muttered as we spun up to the brig. 

The doors were open and girls 
were chattering in every corner. Sis 
came up to the Captain to discuss 
arrangements. I slipped away and 
found Butt sitting with folded arms 
in a corner of the brig. He grinned 
at me. "Hi, tadpole. Like the 
splash?" 

I shook my head unhappily. 
"Butt, why did you do it? I'd sure 
love to be your brother-in-law, but, 
gosh, you didn't have to marry 
Sis/' I pointed at some of the 
bustling females. Sis was going to 
have three hundred bridesmaids. 
"Any one of them would have 
jumped at the chance to be your 
wife. And once on any woman's 
passport, you'd be free. Why Sis?" 

"That's what the Captain said in 
the lifeboat. Told him same thing 
I'm telling you. I'm stubborn. What 
I like at first, I keep on liking. 
What I want at first, I keep on 
wanting until I get/* / 

"Yes, but making Sis sheriff! 
fl i And you'll have to back her up 
with your blaster. What'll happen 
to that man's world?" 

"Wait'Il after we nest and go 
out to my islands." He produced a 
hard-lipped, smug grin, sighting it 
at Sis's slender back. "She'll find 
herself sheriff over a bunch of na- 
tives and exactly two Earth males 
— you and me. I got a hunch that'll 
keep her pretty busy, though." 

—WILLIAM TENN 



20 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 






ommon 



enominator 



BY JOHN D. MacDONALD 



Advanced races generally are eager to 
share their knowledge with primitive 
ones. In this case * . • with Earthmen! 



Illustrated by DON HUNTER 



WHEN Scout Group Fort/ 
flickered back across half 
the Galaxy with a com- 
plete culture study of a Class Seven 
civilization on three planets of 
Argus Ten, the Bureau of Stellar 
Defease had, of course, a priority 
claim on all data. Class Sevens 
were rare and of high potential 
danger, so all personnel of Group 



Fbrty were placed in tight quaran- 
tine during the thirty days required 
for a detailed analysis of the thou- 
sands of film spools. 

News of the contact leaked out 
and professional alarmists predict- 
ed dire things on the news screens 
of the three home planets of Sol. 
A retired admiral of the Space 
Navy published an article in which 



COMMON DENOMINATOR 



21 



he stated bitterly that the fleet had 
been weakened by twenty years of 
softness in high places. 

On the thirty-first day, B.S.D. 
reported to System President Mize 
that the inhabitants of the three 
planets of Argus 10 constituted no 
threat, that there was no military 
necessity for alarm, that approval 
of a commerce treaty was recom- 
mended,, that all data was being 
turned over to the Bureau of 
Stellar Trade and Economy for 
analysis, that personnel of Scout 
Group Forty was being given sixty 
days' leave before reassignment. 

B.S.T.E. released film to all com- 
mercial networks at once, and 
visions of slavering oily monsters 
disappeared from 'the imagination 
of mankind. The Argonauts, as 
they came to be called, were pleas- 
antly similar to mankind. It was 
additional proof that only in the 
rarest instance was the life-apex on 
any .planet in the home Galaxy an 
abrupt divergence from the "hu- 
man 1 ' form. The homogeneousness 
of planet elements throughout the 
Galaxy made homogeneousness of 
life-apex almost a truism. The 
bipedal, oxygen-breathing verte- 
brate with opposing thumb seems 
best suited for survival. 

It* was evident that, with train- 
ing, the average Argonaut could 
pass almost unnoticed in the Solar 
/ysteni. The flesh tones were bright- 
ly pink, like that of a sunburned 
human. Cranial hair was uniformly 
taffy-yellow. They were heavier and 



more fleshy than humans. Their 
women had a pronounced Rubens 
look, a warm, moist, rosy, comfort- 
able look. 

- 

EVERYONE remarked on the 
placidity and contentment of 
facial expressions, by human stand- 
ards. The inevitable comparison 
was made. The Argonauts looked 
like a race of inn and beer-garden 
proprietors in the Bavarian Alps. 
With leather pants to slap, stein 
lids to click, feathers in Tyrolean 
hats and peasant skirts on their 
women, they would represent a cul- 
ture and a way of life that had 
been missing from Earth for far 
too many generations. 

Eight months after matters had 
been turned over to B.S.T.E., the 
First Trade Group returned to 
Earth with a bewildering variety of 
artifacts and devices, plus a round 
dozen Argonauts. The Argonauts • 
had learned to speak Solian with 
an amusing guttural accent. They 
beamed on everything and every- 
body. They were great pets until 
the novelty wore off. Profitable 
trade was inaugurated, because the 
Argonaut devices all seemed de- 
signed to make life more pleasant. 
The scent-thesizer became very 
popular once it was adjusted to 
meet human tastes. Worn as a lapel 
button, it could create the odor of 
pine, broiled steak, spring flowers, 
Scotch whisky, musk — even skunk 
for the practical jokers who exist in 
all ages and eras. 



22 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



Any home equipped with an 
Argonaut static-clean never became 
dusty. It used no power and had 
to be emptied only once a year. 

Technicians altered the Argonaut 
mechanical game animal so that it 
looked like an Earth rabbit. The 
weapons which shot a harmless 
beam were altered to look like 
ri fles. After one experience with 
the new game, hunters were almost 
breathless with excitement. The in- 
credible agility of the median ical 
animal, its ability to take cover, the 
fact that, once the beam felled it, 
you could use it over and over again 
— all this made for -the promulga- 
tion of new non-lethal hunting. 

LAMBERT, chief of the Bureau 
of Racial Maturity, waited pa- 
tiently for his chance at the Argo- 
naut data. The cramped offices in 
the temporary wing of the old Sys- 
tem Security Building, the meager 
appropriation, the obsolete office 
equipment, the inadequate staff all 

testified not only to the Bureau'. 
lack of priority, but also to a lack 
of knowledge of its existence on 
the part of many. System official 
Lambert, crag-faced, sandy, slow- 
moving, was a historian, anthropol- 
ogist and sociologist. He was 
realist enough to understand that if 
the Bureau of Racial Maturity 
happened to be more important in 
System Government, it would prob- 
ably be headed by a man with fewer 
academic and more political quali- 
fications. 



And Lambert knew, beyond an 
doubt at ail, that the B.R.M. was 
more important to the race and the 
future of the race than any other 
branch of System Government. 

Set up by President Tollcs, an 
adult and enlightened administra- 
tor, the Bureau was now slowly 
being strangled by a constantly de- 
creasing appropriation. 

Lambert knew that mankind had 
come too far, too fast. Mankind 
had dropped out of a tree with all 
the primordial instincts to rend and 

tear and claw. Twenty thousand 
years later, and with only a few 
thousand years of dubiously record- 
ed history, he had readied the stars. 
It was too quick. 

Lambert knew that mankind 
must become mature in order to 
survive. The domination of instinct 
had to be watered down, and rap- 
idly. Selective breeding might do 
it, but it was an answer impossible 
to enforce. He hoped that one day 
the records of an alien civilization 
would give him the answer. After 
a year of bureaucratic wriggling, 
feints and counter-feints, he had 
acquired the right of access to Scout 
Group Data. 

As his patience dwindled he 
wrote increasingly firm letters to 
Central Files and Routing. In the 
end, when he finally located the 
data improperly stored in the closed 
files of the B.S.T.E., he took no 
more chances. He went in person 
with an assistant named Cooper 
and a commandeered electric hand- 



COMMON DENOMINATOR 



23 



truck, and bullied a D.S.T.E. stor- 
age clerk into accepting a receipt 
for the Argonaut data. The clerk's 
cooperation was lessened by never 
having heard of the Bureau of 
Racial Maturity. 

THE file contained the dictionary 
and grammar compiled by the 
Scout Group, plus all the films 
taken on the three planets of Argus 
10, plus micro-films of twelve thou- 
sand books written in the language 
of the Argonauts. Their written 
language was ideographic, and thus 
presented more than usual difficul- 
ties. Lambert knew that translations 
had been made, but somewhere 
along the line they had disappeared. 

Lambert set his whole staff to 
work on the language. He hired 
additional linguists out of his own 
thin enough pocket. He gave up 
all outside activities in order to 
hasten the progress of his own 
knowledge. His wife, respecting 
Lambert's high order of devotion 
to his work, kept their two half- 
grown children from interfering 
during those long evenings when 
he studied and translated at home. 

Two evenings a week Lambert 
called on ■ Vonk Poogla, the 
Argonaut assigned to Trade Coor- 
dination, and improved his conver- 
sational Argonian to the point 
where he could obtain additional 
historical information from the 
pink wide "man." 

Of the twelve thousand books, 
the number of special interest to 



Lambert were only one hundred 
and ten. On those he based his 
master chart. An animated film of 
the chart was prepared at Lambert's 
own expense, and, when it was 
done, he requested an appointment 
with Simpkin, Secretary for Stellar 
Affairs, going through all the 
normal channels to obtain the inter- 
view. He asked an hour of Simp- 
kin's time. It took two weeks. 

Simpkin was a big florid man 
with iron-gray hair, skeptical eyes 
and that indefinable look of politi- 
cal opportunism. 

He came around his big desk to 
shake Lambert's hand. "Ah . . . 
Lambert! Glad to see you, fella. I 
ought to get around to my Bureau 
Chiefs more often, but you know 
how hectic things are up here/ 1 

"I know, Mr. Secretary. I have 
something here of the utmost im- 
portance and — " 

"Bureau of Racial .Maturity, isn't 
it? I never did know exactly what 
you people do. Sort of progress 
records or something?" 

"Of the utmost importance," 
Lambert repeated doggedly. 

Simpkin smiled. "1 hear that all 
day, but go ahead." 

"I want to show you a chart. A 
historical chart of the Argonaut 
civilization." Lambert put the pro- 
jector in position and plugged it 
in. 1 (e focused it on the wall screen. 

"It was decided/' Simpkin said 
firmly, "that the Argonauts are not 
a menace to us in any — " 

"I know that, sir. Please look at 



24 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



the chart first and then, when 
you've seen it, I think you MI know 
what I mean." 

''Go ahead/* Simpkin agreed re- 
signedly* 

"I can be accused of adding 
apples and lemons in tins presenta- 
tion, sir. Note the blank chart. The 
base line is in years, adjusted to 
our calendar so as to give a com- 
parison. Their recorded history cov- 
ers twelve thousand of our years. 
That's better than four times ours. 
Now note the red line. MMi.it shows 
the percentage of their total popu- 
lation involved in wars. It peaked 
eight thousand years ago. Note how 
suddenly it drops after that. In five 
hundred years it sinks to the base 
line and does not appear again. 

"Here comes the second line. 
Crimes of violence. It also peaks 
eight thousand years ago, It drops 
less quickly than the war line, and 
never docs actually cut the base 
line. Some crime still cm. is fhere. 

But a very, very tiny percentage 
compared to ours on a population 
basis, or to their own past. The 
third line, the y\ How line climbing 
abruptly, is the index of insanity. 
Again a peak during the same ap- 
proximate period in their history. 

Again a drop almost to the base 

1. « 
inc. 

SIMPKIN pursed his heavy lips. 
"Odd, isn't it?" 
"Now this fourth line needs 
some explaining. I winnowed out 
death rates by age groups. Their 




COMMON DENOMINATOR 



25 



life span is 1.3 times ours, so it had 
to be adjusted. I found a strange 
thing. I took the age group con- 
forming to our 18 to 24 year group. 
That green line. Note that by the 
time we start getting decent figures, 
nine thousand years ago, it remains 
almost constant,, and at a level con- 
forming to our own experience. 
Now note what happens when the 
green line reaches a point eight 
thousand years ago. See how it be- 
gins to climb? Now steeper, almost 
vertical. It remains at a high level 
for almost a thousand years, way 
beyond the end of their history of 
war, and then descends slowly to- 
ward the base line, leveling out 
about two thousand years ago." 

Lambert clicked off the projec- 
tor. 

"Is that all?" Simpkin asked. 

"Isn't it enough? I'm concerned 
with the future of our own race. 
Somehow the Argonauts have 
found an answer to war, insanity, 
violence. We need that answer if 
•we are to survive." 

"Come now, Lambert/' Simpkin 
said wearily. 

"Don't you see it? Their history 
parallels ours. They had our same 
problems. They saw disaster ahead 
and did something about it. What 
did they do? I have to know that." 
How do you expect to? 
I want travel orders to %o 
there." 

"I'm afraid that's quite impos- 
sible. There are no funds for that 
sort of jaunt, Lambert. And I think 



% c 



t c 



you are worrying over nothing." 

"Shall I show you some of our 
own trends? Shall I show you mur- 
der turning from the most horrid 
crime into a relative commonplace? 
Shall I show you the slow inevi- 
table increase in asylum space?" 

"'I know all that, man. But look 
at the Argonauts! Do you want 
that sort of stagnation ? Do you 
want a race of fat, pink, sleepy — " 

"Maybe they had a choice. A 
species of stagnation, or the end of 
their race. Faced with that choice, 
which would you pick, Mr. Secre- 
tary?" 

"There are no funds." 

"All I want is authority. I'll pay 
my own way." 

And he did. 

REAN was the home planet of 
the Argonauts, the third from 
their sun. When the trade ship 
flickered into three-dimensional ex- 
istence, ten thousand miles above 
Rean, Lambert stretched the space- 
ache out of his long bones and 
muscles and smiled at Vonk 
Poogla. 

"You could have saved me the 
trip, you know," Lambert said. 

A grin creased the round pink- 
visage. "Nuddink ventured, nud- 
dink gained. Bezides, only my 

cousin can speak aboud this thing 
you vunder aboud. My cousin is 
werry important person. He is one 
picks me to go to your planet." 

Vonk Poogla was transported 
with delight at being able to show 



26 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



the wonders of the ancient capital 
city to Lambert. It had been sacked 
and burned over eight thousand 
Earth years before, and now it wis 
mellowed by eighty-three cent urn 
ol unbroken peace. It rested in the 
pastel twilight, and there were 
laughter and soft singing in the 

broad streets. Never had Lambert 
felt such a warm aura of security 
and . . . love. No other word but 
thai ultimate one seemed right. 

In the morning they went to the 
squat blue building where Vook 
Soobuknoora, the important person, 
had his administrative headquar- 
ters. Lambert, knowing enough of 
Argonaut governmental structure to 
understand that Soobuknoora was 
titular head of the three-plane ov- 
ernxnent, could not help but i om- 
pare the lack of protocol with what 

he i oufcl expect were he to try to 
take Vonk Poogla for an interview 
with President Mizc. 

Soobuknoora was a smaller, <>h(< 
edition of Poogla, his pink f.w 
wrinkled, his greening hair retain- 
in;; only a trace of the original 
yellow. Soobuknoora spoke no So- 
lian mm\ lie was very pleased to 
find that Lambert spoke Argonian. 

Soobuknoora watched the animat- 
ed chart with considerable interest- 
After it was over, he seemed lost in 

thought. 

"It is something so private with 
us, Man Lambert, that we seldom 
speak of it to each other," Soobuk- 
noora said in Argonian. "It is not 
written. Maybe we have shame — ft 



guilt sense. That is hard to say. I 
have decided to tell you what took 
place among us eight thousand 
years ago." 

"I would be grateful." 

"TT7E LIVE in contentment. 

VV Maybe it is good, maybe 
it is not so good. But we continue- 
to live. Where did our trouble come 
from in the old days, when we 
were like your race? Back when we 
were brash and young and wicked- 
ly cruel? From the individuals, 
those driven ones who were moti- 
vated to succeed despite all obsta- 
cles. They made our paintings, 
wrote our music, killed each other, 
fomented our unrest, our wars. 
We live oft" the bewildering rich- 
ness of our past." 

He sighed. "It was a problem. 
To understand our solution, you 
must think of an analogy, Man 
Lambert. Think of a factory where 
machines are made. We will call 
the acceptable machines stable, the 

unacceptable ones unstable. They 

are built with a flywheel which must 
turn at a certain speed. If it ex- 
ceeds that speed, it is no good. But 
a machine that is stable can, at any 
time, become unstable. What is tin 
solution ?" He smiled at Lambert. 

"I'm a bit confused," Lambert 
confessed. "You would have to go 
around inspecting the machine 
constantly for stability." 

"And use a gauge? No. Too 
much trouble. An unstable machine 
can do damage. So we do this — v 



COMMON DENOMINATOR 



27 



put a little governor on the ma- 
chine. When the speed passes the 
safety mark, the machine breaks/' 

"But this is an analogy, Vonk 
jobuknoora!" Lambert protested. 
"You can't put a governor on a 
man!" 

"Man is born with a governor, 
Man Lambert. Look back in both 
our histories, when we were not 
much above the animal level. An 
unbalanced man would die. He 
could not compete for food. He 
)uld not organize the simple 
things of his life for survival, Man 
Lambert, did you ever have a fleet- 
ing impulse to kill yourself?" 

Lambert smiled. "Of course. 
You could almost call that impulse 
.1 norm for intelligent species." 

"Did it ever go far enough so 
that you considered a method, a 
weapon ?" 

Lambert nodded slowly. "It's 
hard to remember, but I think I 
did. Yes, once I did." 

"And what would have hap- 
pened," the Argonaut asked soft- 
ly, "if there had been available to 
you in that moment a weapon com- 
pletely painless, completely final?" 

LAMBERT'S mouth went dry. 
*'I would probably have used 
it- I was very young. Wait! I'm be- 
inning to see what you mean, 
but— " 

"The governor had to be built 
into the body," Soobuknoora inter- 
rupted, "and yet so designed that 
there would be no possibility of 



accidental activation. Suppose that 
on this day I Start to think of how 
gteat and powerful I am in this 
position I have. I get an enormous 
desire to become even more power- 
ful. I begin to reason emotionally. 
Soon I have a setback'. I am de- 
pi ed. I am out of balance, you 
could say. I have become danger- 
ous to myself and to our culture. 

"In a moment of depression, I 
take these two smallest fingers of 
each hand. I reach behind me and 
I press the two fingers, held firmly 
together, to a space in the middle 
of my back. A tiny capsule buried 
at the base of my brain is activated 
and I am dead within a thousandth 




part of a second. Vonk Poogla is 
the same. All of us arc the same. 
The passing urge for sell -destruc- 
tion happens to be the common de- 
nominator of imbalance. We 
purged our race of the influence of 
the neurotic, the egocentric the 
hypersensitive, merely by makin 



23 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



tt< 



It 



self-destruction very, very easy." 
Then that death rate — ?" 
At eighteen the operation is 
performed. It is very quick and 
very simple. We saw destruction 
ahead. We had to force it through. 
In the beginning the deaths were 
frightening, there were so many of 
them. The stable ones survived, 
bred, reproduced. A lesser but still 
great percentage of the next gen- 
eration went — and so on, until now 
it is almost static." 

In Atgonian Lambert said hotly, 
"Oh, it sounds fine! But what 
about children ? What sort of heart- 
less race can plant the seed of death 
in its own children?" 

NEVER before had he seen the 
faintest trace of anger on any 

Argonaut face. The single nostril 
widened and Soobuknoora might 

have raged if he had been from 
Earth. "There are other choices, 
Man Lambert. Our children have 
no expectation of being burned to 
cinder, blown to fragments. They 
are free of that fear. Which is the 
better love, Man Lambert?" 

1 I have two children. I couldn't 
bear to — " 

"Wait !" Soobuknoora said. 
"Think one moment. Suppose you 
were to know that when they 
reached the age of eighteen, both 
your children were to be operated 
on by our methods. How would 
that affect your present relationship 

to them?" 

Lambert was, above all, a realist. 



He remembered the days of being 
"too busy" for the children, of pass- 
ing off itheir serious questions with 
a joking or curt evasion, of play- 
ing with them as though they were 
young, pleasing, furry animals. 

"I would do a better job^ as a 
parent," Lambert admitted. "I 
would try to give them enough 
emotional stability so that they 
would never — have that urge to 
kill themselves. But Ann is delicate, 
moody, unpredictable, artistic." 

Poogla and Soobuknoora nodded 
in unison. "You would probably 
lose that one; maybe you would 
lose both," Soobuknoora agreed. 
"But it is better to lose more than 
half the children of a few genera- 
tions to save the race." 

Lambert thought some more. He 

said, "I shall go back and I shall 

speak of this plan and what it did 
for you. But I do not think my race 
will like it. I do not want to insult 
you or your people, but you have 
stagnated. You stand still in time." 

Vonk Poogla laughed largely. 
"Not by a damn sight," he said 
gleefully. "Next year we stop giv- 
ing the operation. We stop for 
good. It was just eight thousand 
years to permit us to catch our 
breath before going on more safe- 
ly. And what is eight thousand 
years of marking time in the his- 
tory of a race? Nothing, my friend. 
Nothing!" 

When Lambert went back to 
Earth, he naturally quit his job. 

—JOHN D. MacDONALD 



COMMON DENOMINATOR 



29 




Syndrome 

Johnny 



THE blood was added to a 
pool of other blood, mixed, 
centrifuged, separated to 
plasma and corpuscles, irradiated 
slightly, pasteurized slightly, frozen, 
evaporated, and finally banked. 
Some of the plasma was used imme- 
diately for a woman who had bled 
too much in childbirth. 
She died. 
Others received plasma and did 



30 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 




Illustrated by EMSH 



BY CHARLES DYE 



The plagues thai struck mankind 
could be attributed to one man. 
But was he fiend . . • or savior? 



not die. But their symptoms 
changed, including a syndrome of 
multiple endocrine unbalance, ec- 
centricities of appetite and diges- 
tion, and a general pattern of 
emotional disturbance. 

An alert hospital administrator 
investigated the mortality rise and 
narrowed it to a question of who 
had donated blood the week be- 
fore. After city residents were 



SYNDROME JOHNNY 



31 



eliminated, there remained' only the 
signed receipts and thumbprints of 
nine men. Nine healthy unregis- 
tered travelers poor enough to sell 
their blood for money, and among 
them a man who carried death in 
his vein?. The nine thumbprints 
were broadcast to all police files 
and a search began. 

The effort was futile, for there 
were many victims who "had sick- 
ened and grown partially well 
again without recogn izing the 
strangeness of their illness. 

Three years later they reached 
the carrier stage and the epidemic 
Spread to four cities. Three more 
years, and there was an epidemic 
which spread around the world, 
meeting another wave coming from 
the opposite direction. It killed 
two out of four, fifty out of a hun- 
dred, twenty-seven million out of 
fifty million. There was hysteria 
where it appeared. And where it 
had not appeared there were quar- 
antines to fence it out. But it could 
not be fenced out. For two years it 
covered the world. And then it 
vanished again, leaving the sur- 
vivors with a tendency toward glan- 
dular troubles. 

Time passed. The world grew 
richer, more orderly, more peace- 
ful. 

A man paused in the midst of 
his work at the U.N. Food and 
Agriculture Commission. He looked 
up at the red and green production 
map of India. 

"Just too many people per acre," 



he said. "All our work at improv- 
ing production ... just one jump 
ahead of their rising population, 
one jump ahead of famine. Some- 
times I wish to God there wouy 
be another plague to give us a 
breathing spell and a fair chance 
to get things organized/' 

He went back to work and added 
another figure. 

Two months later, he was one of 
the first victims of the secor^d 
plague. 

IN THE dining hall of a univer- 
sity, a biochemical student 
glanced up from his paper to his 
breakfast companion. "You remem- 
ber Johnny, the mythical carrier 
that they told about during the first 
and second epidemics of Syndrome 
Plague?" 

"Sure. Syndrome Johnny. They 
use that myth in psychology class 
as a typical example of mass hys- 
teria. When a city was nervous and 
expecting the plague to reach them, 
some superstitious fool would imag- 
ine he saw Syndrome Johnny and 
the population would panic. Sym- 
bol for Death or some such thing. 
People imagined they saw him in 
every corner of the world. Simul- 
taneously, of course." 

It was a bright morning and they 
were at a window which looked out 
across green rolling fields to a 
towering glass-brick buildiag in the 
distance. 

The student who had gone hack 
lo Ins paper suddenly looked up 



32 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



again. "Some Peruvians here claim 
(hey saw Syndrome Johnny — M 

"Uiotic superstition! You d 
think it would have died down 

when the plague died/' 

The other grinned. "The plague 

didn't die." He folded his news- 
paper slowly, obviously advancing 
.in opening for a debate. 

His companion went on citing. 
"Another of your wild theories, 
huh ?"' Then through a mouthful 
of food: "All right, if the plague 
didn't die, where did it go?" 

"Nowhere. We have it now. We 
all have it!" He shrugged. "A 
virus catalyst of high affinity for 
the cells and a high similarity to a 
normal cell protein — how can it be 
detected?" 

"Then why don't people die? 
Why aren't we sick?" 

"Because we have sickened and 
recovered. We caught it on con- 
ception and recovered before birth. 
Proof? Why do you think that the 
countries which were known as the 

Hungry Lands are now well- fed, 
leisured, educated, advanc ed ? Be- 
cause the birth rate lias fallen ! Why 

lias the birth rate fallen?" He 
paused, then very carefully said, 
"Because two out of three of all 

people who would have lived have 
I before birth, slain by Syn- 
drome Plague. We are all carriers 
now, hosts to a new guest. And" — 
his voice dropped to a mock sin- 
ister whisper — "with sudh a 
stranger within our cells, at the 
heart of the intricate machinery of 



our Jives, who knows what subtle 

changes have crept upon us un- 
noticed I" 

His companion laughed. "Eat 
your breakfast. You belong on a 
horror program!" 

A POLICE psycholo; for the 
Federated Stat of The 
Americas was running through re- 
ports from the Bureau of Social 
Statistics. Suddenly he grunted, 
then a moment later said, "Uh- 
huh!" 

"Uh-huh what?" asked his 
superior, who was reading a news- 
paper with his feet up on the desk. 

"Remember the myth of Syn- 
drome Johnny?" 

"Ghost of Syndrome Plague. Si, 
what of it?" 

"Titaquahapahel, Peru, popula- 
tion nine hundred, sent in a claim 
that he turned up there and they 
almost caught him. Crime Statistics 
rerouted the report to Mass Phe- 
nomena, of course. Mass Phenom- 
ena blew a tube and sent their 
folder on Syndrome Johnny over 

here. Every report they ever had on 
him for ninety years back ! A memo 
cajne with it." He handed the 
memo over. 

The man behind the desk looked 
at it. It was a small graph and 
some mathematical symbols. "What 
is it f 

"It means, ' ' said the psycholo- 

gi-4, smiling dryly, "that every crazy 

report about our ghost has poinis 
of similarity to ever)' other crazy 



SYNDROME JOHNNY 



33 



report. The whole business of Syn- 
drome Johnny has been in their 

'funny coincidence' file for twenty 
ars. This time the suspect hits 

the averaged description of Johnny 
too closely: A solid-looking man, 
unusual number of visible minor 
scars, and a disturbing habit of 
bending his fingers at the first-joint 

knuckles when he is thinking. The 

coincidence has gotten too damn 
funny. There's a chance we've been 
passing up a crime." 

"An extensive crime," said the 
man at the desk softly. He reached 
for the folder. "Yes, a considerable 
quantity of murder." I Ie leafed 
through the folder and then 
thought a while, looking at the 
most recent reports. Thinking was 
what he was paid for, and he earned 
his excellent salary. 

"This thumbprint on the hotel 

ti iter — the name is false, but the 
thumbprint looks real. Could we 
persuade the Bureau of Records to 
give their data on that print?"' 

"Without a warrant ? Against 
constitutional immunity. No, not a 
chance. The public has been touchy 
about the right to secrecy c since 
that police state was attempted in 
Varga." 

"How about persuading an oblig- 
ing judge to give a warrant on 
grounds of reasonable suspicion?" 

"No. We'd have the humanist 
p: i down on our necks in a min- 
ute, and any judge knows it. We'd 
have to prove a crime was com- 
mitted. No crime, no warrant." 



"It seems a pity we can't even 
find out who the gentleman is, [he 
Crimes Department head mur- 
mured, looking at the thumbprint 
wistfully. "No crime, no records. 
No records, no evidence. No evi- 
dence, no proof of crime. There- 
fore, we must manufacture a small 
crime. He was attacked and he must 
iiave defended himself. Someone 
may have been hurt in the process." 
He pushed a button. "Do you think 
if I send a man down there, he 
could persuade one of the mob to 
swear out a complaint?" 

"That's a rhetor it al question," 
said the psychologist, trying to work 
out an uncertain correlation in his 
reports. "With that sort of mob 
hysteria, (lie town would probably 
give you dn affidavit of witchcraft.* 1 

"TDHONh for you, Doctor Al- 
-L cala." The nurse was crisp 
but quiet, smiling down at the little 
girl before vanishing again. 

Ricardo Alcala pushed tin 
plunger in gently, then carefully 
withdrew the hypodermic needle 
from the little girls arm. "There 
you are, Cosita," he said, smiling 
and rising from the chair beside 
the white bed. 

"Will that make me better, Doc- 
tor?" she piped feebly. 

He patted her hand. "Be a gtod 
girl and you will be well tomor- 
row.' He walked out into the ho 
pita! corridor to where the desk 
nurse held on! a phone. 

"Alcala speaking." 



34 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



The voice was unfamiliar. "My 
deepest apologies for interrupting 
your work, Doctor. At this late 
hour I'm afraid I assumed you 
would be at home. The name is 
Camba, Federation Investigator on 
a health case. I would like to con- 
sult you." 

Alcala was tired, but there was 
nothing to do at home. Nita was 
at the health resort and Johnny had 
borrowed all his laboratory space 
for a special synthesis of some sort, 
and probably would be too busy 
even to talk. Interest stirred in him. 
This was a Federation investigator 
calling; the man's work was prob- 
ably important. "Tonight, if that's 
convenient. I'll be off duty in five 
minutes." 

Thirty minutes later they were 

ordering in a small cantina down 

the street from the hospital. 

Julio Camba, Federation Investi- 
gator, was a slender, dark man with 
sharp, glinting eyes. He spoke with 
a happy theatrical flourish. 

"Order what you choose, Senor. 
We're on my expense account. The 
resources of the Federated States 
of all The Americas stand behind 
your menu." 

Alcala smiled. **I wouldn't want 
to add to the national debt." 

"Not at all, Senor. The Federated 
States arc only too happy thus to 
express a fraction of their gratitude 
by adding a touch of luxury to the 
otherwise barren and self-sacrificing 
life of a scientist." 

"You shame me," Aleak said 



dryly. It was true that he needed 
every spare penny for the health 
of Nita and the child, and for the 
laboratory. A penny saved from 
being spent on nourishment was a 
penny earned. He picked up the 
menu again and ordered steak. 

The investigator lit a cigar, ask- 
ing casually; "Do you know John 
Osborne Drake?" 

ALCALA searched his memory. 
"No. I'm sorry . . ." Then 
he felt for the first time how close- 
ly he was being watched, and knew 
how carefully his reaction and the 
tone of his voice had been analyzed. 
The interview was dangerous. For 
some reason, he was suspected of 
something. 

Camba finished lighting the cigar 

and dropped the match into an ash- 
tray. "Perhaps you know John Del- 
gados?",He leaned back into the 
shadowy corner of the booth, 

Johnny! Out of all the people 
in the world, how could the gov- 
ernment be interested in him? Al- 
cala tried to sound casual. "An as- 
sociate of mine. A friend/' 

"I would like to contact the 
gentleman." The request was com- 
pletely unforceful, undemanding. 
"I called, but he was not at home. 
Could you tell me where he might 
be?" 

"Fin sorry, Senor Camba, but I 
cannot say. He could be on a busi- 
ness 'trip." Alcala was feeling in- 
creasingly nervous. Actually, Johnny 
was working at his laboratory. 



SYNDROME JOHNNY 



35 






J • C! 










"Wh.it Jo you know of his ac- 
tivities?" Camba asked. 

"A biochemist." Alcala tried to 
sec past the meditative mask of the 
thin dark face. "He makes small 
job-lots of chemical compounds. 
Special bug spray for sale to experi- 
mental plantations, hormone spray 

for fruits, that sort of thing. Some- 
times, when he collects some money 

ahead, he does research/' 

Gambit waited, and his silence bc- 

i imc a qu Loo, Alcala spoke re- 
luctantly, anger rising in him. "Oh, 
it's genuine research. He has some 
patents and publications to his 

i red it. You can confirm that If you 

choose." He was unable to keep 
the hostility out of his voice. 

A waiter came and placed steam 



ing platters of food on the table. 
Camba waited until he was gone. 
"You know him well, I presume. 
Is he sane?" 

The question was another shock. 
Alcala thought carefully, for any 
man might be insane in secret. 
"Yes, so far as I know." He turnt 
his attention to the steak, but fust 
book three very large capsules from 
a bottle in his pocket. 

"I would not expect that a do< 
tor would need to take pills," 
Camba remarked with friendly 
mockery. 

"I don't need them," Alcala ex- 
plained. "Mixed silicones. I'm 
guinea pigging." 

"Can't such tilings be left to the 
guinea pigs?" Camba asked, watch- 



36 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



ing with revulsion as Alcala un- 
capped the second bottle bid 
sprinkled a layer of gray powder 
over his steak. 

"Guinea pigs have no assimila- 
tion of silicones; onlv man has 

that." 

"Yes, Oi course. I should have 
remembered from your famous 
papers, The Need Of Trace Silicon 
In Human Diet and Silicon defi- 
ciency Diseases." 

OBVIOUSLY Camba had done 
considerable investigating of 
Alcala before approaching him. He 
had even given the titles of the 
research papers correctly. Alcala* s 
wariness increase 

"What is the purpose of the ex- 
periment this time?" asked -the 
small dark Federation agent gen- 
ially. , 

"To determine the safe limits of 
silicon consumption and if there 
are any dangers in an overdose." 

"How do you determine that? 
By dropping dead?" 

He could be right. Perhaps the 
test should be stopped. Every day, 
with growing uneasiness, Alcala 
took his dose of silicon compound, 
and every day, the chemical seemed 
to be absorbed completely — -not re- 
leased or excreted — in a way that 
was unpleasantly reminiscent of the 
way arsenic accumulated without 
evident damage, then killed abrunt- 
ly without warning. 

Already, this evening, he had 
noticed that there was somethir 



faulty about his coordination and 
weight and surface sense. The res- 
taurant door had swung back with 
a curious lightness, and the hollow 
metal handle had had a curious 
softness under his lingers. Some- 
thing merely going wrong with the 
sensitivity of his fingers — ? 

He tapped his fingertips on the 
heavy indestructible silicone plastic 
table top. There was a feeling of 
heaviness in his hands, and a feel- 
ing of faint rubbery give in the 
table. 

Tapping his fingers gently, his 
heavy fingers . . . the answer was 
dreamily fantastic. I'm turning into 
silicon plastic myself, he thought. 
But how, why? He had not both- 
ered to be curious before, but the 
question had always been — what 
were supposedly insoluble silicons 
doing assimilating into the human 
body at all? 

Several moments passed. He 
smoothed back his hair with his 
oddly heavy hand before picking 
up his fork again. 

"I'm turning into plastic," he 
told Camba. 

"I beg your pardon?" 

"Nothing. A joke." 

Camba was turning into plastic, 
too. Everyone was. But the effect 
was accumulating slowly, by gen- 
erations. 

* 

CAMBA lay down his knife and 
started in again. "What con- 
nections have you had with John 

Delgados?" 



SYNDROME JOHNNY 



37 



Concentrate on the immediate 

set Nation. Alcala and Johnny were 
obviously in danger of some sort 
of mistaken arrest and interroga- 
tion. 

As Alcala focused on the ques- 
tion, one errant whimsical thought 
suddenly flitted through the back of 
his mind. In red advertising letters: 

TRY OUR NEW MODEL RUST- 
PROOF, WATERPROOF, HEAT 
& SCALD RESISTANT, STRONG 
—EXTRA - LONG - WEARING 
HUMAN BEING! 

He laughed inwardly and finally 
answered: "Friendship. Mutual in- 
terest in high ion colloidial suspen- 
sions and complex synthesis/' 
Impatience suddenly mastered him. 
"Exactly what is it you wish to 
know, Sen or? Perhaps I could in- 
form you if I knew the reasons for 

your interest/* 



a piece of salad 
"We have reason 
he is Syndrome 



Camba chose 

with great care. 
to believe that 
Johnny/' 

Alcala waited for the words to 
clarify. After a moment, it ceased 
to be childish babble and became 
increasingly shocking. He remem- 
bered the first time he had met John 
Dclgados, the smile, the strong 
handclasp. "Call me Johnny," he 
had said. It had seemed no more 
■thaji a nickname. 

The investigator was watching 
his expression with bright brown 
eyes. 

Johnny, yes . . . but not Syn- 
drome Johnny. He tried to think of 



some quick refutation. "The whole 
thing is preposterous, Senor 
Camba. The myth of Syndrome 
Plague Johnny started about a cen- 
tury ago." 

"Doctor Alcala" — the small man 
in the gray suit was tensely sober — 
"John Delgados is very old, and 
John Delgados is not his proper 
name. I have traced his life back 
and back, through older and older 
records in Argentina, Panama, 
South Africa, the United States, 
China, Canada. Everywhere he has 
paid his taxes properly, put his 
fingerprints on file as a good citizen 
should. And he changed his name 
every twenty years, applying to the 

courts for permission with good 
honest reasons for changing his 
name. Everywhere he has been a 
laboratory worker, held patents, 
sometimes made a good deal of 
money. He is one hundred and forty 
years old. His first income tax was 
pa,id in 1970, exactly one hundred 
apd twenty years ago." 

"Other men are that old," said 
Alcala. 

j"Other men are old, yes. Those 
who survived the two successive 
plagues, were unusually durable." 
Camba finished and pushed back 
his plate. "There is no crime in 
being long-lived, surely. But he has 
changed his name five times!" 

"That proves nothing. Whatever 
his reasons for changing his name, 
it doesn't prove that he is Syndrome 
Johnny any more than it proves he 
is the cow that jumped over the 



38 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



moon. Syndrome Johnny is a myth, 
a figment of mob delirium/* 

AS HE said it, he knew it was 
not true. A Federation inves- 
tigator would not be on a wild 
goose chase. 

The plates were taken away and 
cups of steaming black coffee put 
between them. He would have to 
warn Johnny. It was strange how 
well you could know a man as well 
as he knew Johnny, firmly enough 
to believe that, despite evidence, 
everything the man did was right. 

"Why must it be a myth?" 
Camba asked softly. ; 

"It's ridiculous!" Alcala protest- 
ed. "Why would any man — M His" 
voice cut off as unrelated facts fell 
into a pattern. He sat for a mo- 
ment, thinking intensely, seeing the 

century of plague as something he 
had never dreamed . , . 

A price. 

Not too high a price in the long 
run, considering what was pur- 
chased. Of course, the great change 
over into silicon catalysis would b£ 
a shock and require adjustment and, 
of course, the change must be made 
in several easy stages — and those 
who could not adjust would die. 

"Go on, Doctor," Camba urged 
softly. " 'Why would any man — ' " 

He 'tried -to find a way of ex- 
plaining which would not seem to 
have any relationship to John Del- 
gados. "It has been recently dis- 
covered" — but he did not say how 
recently — "that the disease of Syn- 



drome Plague was not a disease. It 
is an improvement.' ' He had spoken 
clumsily. 

"An improvement on life?" 
Camba laughed and nodded, but 
there were bitterness and anger 
burning behind the small man's 
smile. "People can be improved to 
death by the millions. Yes, yes, go 
on, Senor. You fascinate me." 

"We are stronger," Alcala told 
him. "We are changed chemically. 
The race has been improved!" 

"Come, Doctor Alcala/' Camba 
said with a sneering merriment, 
"the Syndrome Plagues have come 
and they have gone. Where is this 
change ?" 

Alcala tried -to express it clearly. 
"We are stronger. Potentially, we 
are tremendously stronger. But we 

of this generation are still weak and 

ill, as our parents were, from the 
shock of the change. And we need 
silicone feeding; we have not ad- 
justed yet. Our illness masks our 
strength." He thought of what that 
strength would be! 

Camba smiled and took out a 
small notebook. "The disease is 
connected with silicones, you say? 
The original* name of John Del- 
gados was John Osborne Drake. 
His father was Osborne Drake, a 
chemist at Dow Corning, who was 
sentenced to the electric chair in 
1967 for unauthorized bacterial ex- 
periments which resulted in an acci- 
dental epidemic and eight deaths. 
Dow Corning was the first major 
manufactury of silicones in Amer- 



SYNDROME JOHNNY 



39 



ica, though not connected in any 
way with Osborne Drake's criminal 
experiments. It links together, does 
it not?" 

"It is not a disease, it is 
strength!" Alcala insisted doggedly. 

THE small investigator looked up 
from his notebook and his 
smile was an unnatural thing, a 
baring of teeth. "Half the world 
died Of this strength, Senor. If you 
will not think of the men and 
women, think of the children. Mil- 
lions of children died!" 

The waiter brought the bill, 
dropping it on the table between 
tli em. 

"Lives will be saved in the long 
run," Alcala said obstinately. "In- 
dividual deaths are not important 
in the long run." 

"That is hardly the philosophy 

for a doctor, is it?" asked Camba 

with open irony, taking the bill and 
rising. 

They went out of the restaurant 
in silence. Camba s 'copter stood 
at die curb, 

"Would you care for a lift home, 
Doctor Alcala ?" The offer was 
made with the utmost suavity. 

Alcala hesitated fractionally. 
"Why, yes, thank you." It would 

not do to give the investigator any 
reason for suspicion by refusing. 

As the 'copter lifted into the air, 
Camba spoke with a more friendly 
note in his voice, as if he humored 
a child. "Come, Alcala, you're a 
doctor dedicated to saving lives. 



How can you find sympathy for a 
murderer?" 

Alcala sat in the dark, looking; 
through the windshield down at 
the bright street falling away be- 
low. "I'm not a practicing medico; 
only one night a week do I come 
to the hospital. I'm a research man. 
I don't try to save individual live 
I'm dedicated to improving the 
average life, the .u tge health. Can 
you undc uul that? Individuals 
may be sick and individuals may- 
die, but the average lives on. And 
if the average is better, then I'm 
satisfied." 

The 'copter flew on. There was 

no answer. 

"I'm not good with words," said 
Alcala. Then, taking out his pen- 
knife and unfolding it, he said, 
"Watch!" He put his index finger 
on the altimeter dial, where there 
was light, and pressed the blade 
against the flesh between his finger 
and his thumb. He increased the 
pressure until the flesh stood out 
white on either side of the blade, 
bending, but not cut. 

"Three general ions back, th is 
pressure would have gone right 
through the hand." He took away 
the blade and there was only* a very 
tiny cut. Putting the knife away, 
he brought out his lighter. The blue 
flame was steady and hot. Alcala 
held it close to the dashboard and 
put his finger directly over it, count- 
ing patiently, "One, two, three, 
four, five — " He pulled the lighter 
hack, snapping it shut. 



40 



GALAXT SCIENCE FICTION 




V*7? 



"Three generations ago, a man 

couldn't have held a finger over 

that flame for more than a tenth 

trt of that count. Doesn't all this 

prove something to you?" 

The 'copter was hovering above 
Alcala's house. Camba lowered it 

to the ground and opened the door 
before answering. "It proves only 
thai a good and worthy man will 
i at and burn his hand for an un- 
worthy friendship. Good night.'* 

Disconcerted, Alcala watched the 
'copter lift away into the night, 
then, turning, saw that the lights 
were still on in the laboratory. 
Camba might have deduced some- 
thing from that, if he knew that 
Nita and the girl were not sup- 
posed to be home. 

Alcala hurried in. 

Johnny hadn't left yet. He was 
sitting at Alcala's desk with <his 
feet on -the wastcbasket, the way 



Alcala often liked to sit, reading 
a technical journal. He looked up, 
smiling. For a moment Alcala saw 
him with the new clarity of a 
stranger. The lean, weathered face; 

brown eyes with smile deltas at the 
corners; wide shoulders; steady, big 

hands holding the magazine — solid, 

able, and ruthless enough to see 
what had to be done, and do it. 
"I was waiting for you, Ric." 
"The Feds are after you." Ri- 
cardo Alcala had been running. He 
found he was panting and his heart 
was pounding. 

Delgados' smile did not change. 
"It's all right, Ric. Everything's 

done. I can leave any time now/*' 
He indicated a square metal box 
standing in a corner. "There's the 

stuff." 

• What stuff? The product Johnny 
had been working on? "You 

haven't time for that now, Johnny. 



SYNDROME JOHNNY 



41 



You cant sell it. They'd watch for 
anyone of your description selling 
chemicals. Let me loan you some 
money." 

"Thanks," Johnny was smiling 
oddly. "Everything's set. I won't 
need it. How close are they to 
finding me?" 

"They don't know where you're 
staying/ 1 Alcala leaned on the desk 
edge and put out his hand. "They 
tell me you're Syndrome Johnny." 

"I thought you'd figured that one 
out." Johnny shook his hand for- 
mally. "The name is John Osborne 
Drake. You aren't horrified?" 

"No." Alcala knew that he was 
shaking hands with a man who 
would be thanked down all the* suc- 
cessive generations of mankind. He 
noticed again the odd white web- 
work of scars on the back of 
Johnny's hand. He indicated them 
.is' casually as he could. "Where did 
you pick those up?" 

JOHN DRAKE glanced at his 
hand. "I don't know, Ric. 
Truthfully. I've had my brains 
beaten in too often to remember 
much any more. Unimportant. 
There are instructions outlining 
plans and methods filed in safety 
deposit boxes in almost every big 
.city in the world. Always the same 
typing, always the same instruc- 
tions. I can't remember who typed 
them, myself or my father, but I 
must have been expected to forget 
or they wouldn't be there. Up to 
eleven, my memory is all right, but 



after Dad started to remake me, 
everything gets fuzzy." 
"After he did what?" 

Johnny smiled tiredly and rested 

his head on one hand. "He had to 
remake me chemically, you know. 
How could I spread change with- 
out being changed myself? I 
couldn't have two generations to 
adapt to it naturally like you, Ric. 
It had to be done artificially. It 
took years. You understand? I'm a 
community, a construction. The 
cells that carry on the silicon me- 
tabolism in me are not human. Dad 
adapted them for the purpose. I 
helped, but I can't remember any 
longer how it was done. I think 
When I've been badly damaged, or- 
ganization scatters to the separate 
cells in my body. They can survive 
better that way, and they have 
powers of regrouping and healing. 
But memory can't be pasted to- 
gether again or regrown," 

John Drake rose and looked 
around the laboratory with some- 
thing like triumph. "They're too 
late. I made it, Ric. There's the 
catalyst cooling over there. This is 
the last step. I don't think I'll 
survive this plague, but Til last 
long enough to set it going for the 
finish. The police won't stop me 
until it's too late." 

ANOTHER plague! 
' The last one had been be- 
fore Alcala was born. He had not 
thought that Johnny would start 
another. It was a shock. 



42 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



Alula walked over to the cage 
where he kept his white mice and 
looked in, trying to sort out his 
feelings. The white mice looked 
back with beady bright eyes, caged, 
not knowing they were waiting to 
be experimented upon. 

A timer clicked and John Del- 
gados-Drake became all rapid effi- 
cient activity, moving from valve 
to valve. It lasted a half minute or 
less, then Drake had finished strip- 
ping off the lab whites to his street 
clothes. He picked up the square 
metal box containing the stuff he 
had made, tucked it under his arm 
and held out a solid hand again 
to Alcala. 

"Good-by, Ric. Wish me luck. 
Close up the lab for me, will you? 1 ' 

Alcala took the hand numbly and 
mumbled something, turned back 

to the cages and stared blindly at 

ihc mice. Drake's brisk footsteps 
clattered down the stairs. 

ANOTHER step forward for the 
human race. 

God knew what wonders for the 
race were in that box. Perhaps 
something for i lerve construction, 
something for the mind — the last 
and most important step. He should 
have asked. 

There came at last a pressure 
thai was a thought emerging from 
the depth of intuition. Doctor RJ- 
cardo Alcala will die in the tze>: 
plague, he and his ill xcift Nha and 
bis ill little girl . . . And the name 
of Alcala will die forever as a weak 



strain blotted from the bloodstream 
of the race ... 

He'd find out what was in the 
box by dying of it! 

He tried to reason it cut, but 
only could remember that Nita, al- 
ready sickly, would have no chance. 
And Alcala's family genes, in at- 
tempting to adapt to the previous 
steps, had become almost sterile. It 
had been difficult having children. 
The next step would mean comph t< 
sterility. The name of Alcala would 
die. The future might be wonder- 
ful, but it would not be his future! 

"Johnny!" he called suddenly, 
something like an icy lump harden- 
ing in his chest. How long had it 
been since Johnny had left? 

Running, Alcala went down the 
long half-lit stairs, out the back 
door and along the dark path to- 
ward the place where Johnny's 'cop- 
ter had been parked. 

A light shone through the leav< 
It was still there. 

"Johnny !" 

John Osborne Drake was putting 
his suitcase into the rear of the 
'copter. 

"Whal is it, Ric?" he asked in 
a friendly voice without turning. 

// would he impoi uhle to ask kirn 
to change his mind* Alcala found a 
rock, raised it behind Syndrome- 
Johnny's back. "I know I'm being 
anti-social," he said regretfully, and 
then threw the rock away. 

His fist was enough like stone 
crush a skull. 

—CHARLES DYE 



SYNDROME JOHNNY 



43 



MARS CHILD 



BY CYRIL JUDD 



CONCLUSION OF 3-PART SERIAL 




44 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 




Illustrated by WILLER 



The Martian colonists had tried hard work, 
stubbornness, political pull to save their 
colony from death. Only a miracle was left! 



SYNOPSIS 



TjORTY years have passed since 
-*■ the first rocket crashed on Mars; 
and )iow t for the first time, the 
ancient planet shows some promise 
of becoming a real home jot men. 
Sun Lake City Colony, established 
fourteen months ago, is unique on 
Mars: a cooperative, without indus- 
trial backing, designed jot perm- 
anence rather than profit, lis mem- 
bers range from unskilled laborers 
to accomplished scientists, with one 
conviction in common, that Earth 



is through as a habitation for man, 
because of its wrecked ecology, 
overcrowding, and the inevitability 
of a cataclysmic radiological war. 

In the Sun Lake Laboratory, rw- 
dioi sot opes are produced from 
Mars' naturally low-radioactive soil, 
for export to Earth. But the Col- 
ony's goal is independence^ and th 
trade will cease as soon as an agri- 
cultural cycle can be established, 
and when an acceptable substitute 
is found for Earth-import OxEn — 



MARS CHILD 



4 5 



the "oxygen enzyme" pills that en- 
able humans to breathe Mars air. 
One of the few qualifications for 

residence in Sun Lake is the r 'M 
or M" ruling; all members must 
be either married or marriageable. 
JIM and POLLY KANDRO came 
to the Colony partly to get away 

from the scene of half a dozen 
tragic miscarriages on Earth s so 
there is double cause for celebra- 
tion when the first baby actually 
conceived in the Colony is bom to 

Polly. 

The birth is attended by the Sun 
Lake doctor, TONY HELLMAN, 
in his one room rammed "earth" 
hospital, At thirty-two, Tony is one 
of the older scientists, although 
still unmarried. He is a member of 
the Colony Council, and is also the 

Ldtis radiological safety monitor. 

Since OxEn cannot be absorbed by 

infants, the doctor fits the new baby 
with a specially designed oxygen 
mask. The baby is named SUN 
LAKE CITY COLONY KAN- 
DRO— "Sunny" for short. 

But the Colony is visited by 
HAMILTON BELL, Planetary Af- 
fairs Commissioner on Mars for 
the -PanAnierican World Federa- 
tion. Bell is acting on a complaint 
made by HUGO BRENNER, no- 
toriously wealthy drug nu in ufac- 
turer; 1 00 kilograms of marcaine 
have been stolen; the "scent" was 
traced to the Colony with an elec- 
tronic device known as the "Blood- 
hound." 

Commissioner Bell now proposes 



to conduct a ruinous searfh, which 
would destroy delicate equipment 
and contaminate ready-to-go ship- 
ments. The colonists bargain with 
him, and accept a desperate alterna- 
tive. They may conduct their own 
search, but if they fail to deliver up 
thief and marcaine both by Ship- 
ment Day, the Colony will be sealed 
off by a military cordon for six 
months to permit an official search. 
Sun Lake's economy could not pos- 
sibly survive such a blow. 

Tony meets with the other mem- 
bers of the Colony Council; black- 
tired, sharp-eyed MIMl JON A 
THAN, formerly a top-flight insnr- 
e executive, now Lab Adminis- 
trator; JOE GRACEY . senior 
agronomist at Sun Lake, once a col- 
ge professor; and NICK CAN'J - 
RELLA, an inspired engineer- 

u ithont-degree, o found no way 
to utilize his talents on Earth. 

Electro-eucephalo graph tests are 
given the entire community, to test 
>r the characteristic brain-wares of 
marcaine usage. The results are neg- 
ative. The colonists attempt to pro- 
cure a "Bloodhound/' but Bell 

refuses them the use of police 
equipment. They lay plans for the 
difficult job of searching the Col- 
ony without one. 

All the while, the doctor has his 
own work to do. Sunny has trouble 
suckling, and Polly, after her years 
of waiting, is overanxious. The doc- 
tor becomes seriously worried about 
her when her hysteria produces hal- 
lucinations about "Brownies," a 



46 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



legendary native life-form, sup- 
posed to look much like the Earth- 
side story book creatures, and re- 
ported to steal human babies for 
ritual feasts. 

Another problem patient is Joan 
Rad cliff, who is dying of a myster- 

ious Martian ailment winch Tony 

cannot even diagnose, Jet alone 
treat. She refuses to return to Earth 
partly because of her intense h /- 
ism about the Colony; partly be- 
utse of her husband, HANK 
RADCLIFP, a romantic youngster, 
whose life-dream was to come to 
Mars. If Joan leaves, he must go 
too. And if Bell' \ ultimatum means' 
the end of Sun Lake, it will break 
both their hearts — but save Joan's 
life. 

An added problem is ANNA 
W'lLLENDORP, the doctor's part- 
time assistant- and nurse. A quiet, 
unobtrusive person, she came to 
the Colony as a glassblotver, but 
now has her working equipment 
set up next to the hospital, where 
she is always at hand. Her extra- 
ordinary empathy endears her to 
Tony, but he is not yet ready to tie 
himself to the Colony by marriage. 
Nor can he quite disregard the in- 
terest he feels in BEAU JUAREZ, 
the Colony's daredevil girl pilot. 

But medical and personal prob- 
lems both grow insignificant when 
the news is received that the Earth 
rocket is already in radio range — 
two weeks early. 

There is now just one more week 
to Shipment Day/ 



Tony flies to Marsport with Be a 
to meet the rocket. There be ij 
approached by Brenner, who offers 
him a fabulous salary to leave Sun 
Lake. 

Tony indignantly refuses to doc- 
tor up drug addicts, and a brief 
scuffle ensues. Another industrial- 
ist, who has observed the scene, 
congratulates Tony on his stand, 
and hints at a frameup, with col- 
lusion between Bell and Brenner 
to get the Sun Lake Lab for the 

drug man. 

Before the doctor can digest thi 
news, a new surprise is thrust on 
him. Among the rocket arrivals is 
DOUGLAS GRAHAM, a famous 
gunther who has come to write a 
book, "This Is Mars!" — and has 
chosen Sun Lake as his first stop- 
ping-point. The reporter gpts his 

first look at Mars when a radio 
message requests the doctor to stop 
at Sun Lake f s nearest neighbor, 
Pittco 3, to examine a seriously 
injured woman. 

Tony arrives too Lite to help; 
"Big Ginny" an inmate of the 
Pitt t o company brothel, is dead, 
the victim of a clumsy attempt at 

self -abortion, followed by a vicious 
beating about the head, shoulder 
and chest, and finished off by inept 
first aid. 

Back at Sun Lake, Tony plunges 
into the job of monitoring the Lab 
search. He also finds himself elect- 
ed bost-in-cbief to the reporter. 
When it becomes clear that no 
stolen marcaine is going to be 



MARS CHILD 



47 



found, Tony appeals to Graham 
for aid, for the reporter has a 
longstanding quarrel with Com* 

missions* Bell. 

Graham promises to write a 

smashing r ose. 

It comet as a brutal shock, then, 
when the doctor finds Polly ill 
from an overdose of marcaiate. 
Graham's help has been icon on 
the i tup: ion thai no mavcaine 

could be f 

As a d<>[ however, Tony's 

fir n must he the baby; 

Polly's milk now contains marcaine. 

I the early hours df the morr 
A : is routed out of bed to wake 
bottles, and a lab technician t 

rjake plastic j;/ppUs. A formula is 

prepared, but the first bottle feed' 
ing offered to Sunny brings on a 
crisis. The baby has always had 
trouble suckling — this time, Sunny 
chokes, flushes a bright crimson, 
and seems to stop breathing alto- 
gether, at the just same instant that 

Anna, standing by, suddenly shrieks 
and falls into a dead faint. 

Tony leaves the unconscious 
woman at the Kaudros 9 , and car- 
ries the baby back to his hospital 

room, determined to locate the 

trouble. After a careful examina- 
tion and a sudden hunch, Tony 
tries a desperate experiment — he 
re mo ves Sunnfs was k . The baby 
immediately^ begins to breathe nor- 
mally. 

Earth air is too rich for him! 

Sunny is Marsworthy right from 
birth! 




CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

UNNY!" Polly ran to 
the table where Sunny 
still lay crying, wrapped 
in his blanket again, hungry, an- 
gry, and perfectly safe. "Doctor, 
what did you — how can he — ?" 

"He's fine," Tony assured her. 
"Just leave liim alone. He's hun- 

, that's all." 
Polly stared, fascinated by the 

naked-looking baby. "How can he 
breathe without a mask?" 

"I don't know/' Tony said 
bluntly, "but I tried it and it 
forked. I guess he's got naturally 
Marsworthy lungs. Seems to have 
been the only trouble he had." 

"You mean — 1 thought Mars- 
worthy lungs just meant you could 
breathe Mars air; people like that 
can breathe Earth air, too, can't 

they?" 

Tony shrugged helplessly. He 

was licked and didn't care who 
knew it as long as Sunny was all 
right. For the time 'being, it was 
enough to know that the baby had 
been breathing through his mouth 
all along just because he did pre- 
fer Mars air. He got too much 
oxygen through the mask, so he 
didn't use his nose; a simple re- 
versal of the theory on which the 
mask was based. When his source 
of Mars air was blocked — first by 
his mother's breast, and then, 
when he had learned to adapt to 
that, by the less flexible plastic 
liippLe — he had' to fore 1 1 he the 



48 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



«• 



richer air through his nose, and 
he turned red, coughed, sputtered, 
and choked. 

I want to take him back now," 
said the doctor, "and try another 
feeding. Bet he'll eat right away." 
He picked up the baby, firmly re- 
fusing to surrender him to his 
mother, and led the way out of 
the hospital room and back to the 
Kandros' house. 

Just before they left, Tony heard 
for the first time, consciously, the 
steady clicking of Graham's type- 
writer In the other part of the 
house. He realized it had been go- 
ing almost continuously, and 
thought briefly of going inside to 
say hello, then decided against it. 
I'll see him later on, he thought 
... 7 can explain everything then. 
Obviously, the writer understood 
that an emergency was in progress, 
or else he was so busy himself that 
he didn't want to be bothered, 
either. 



ji 



JIM was thunderstruck by his 
maskless Sunny. Anna seemed 
to have recovered from her faint. 
She was a little pale, but otherwise 
normal, moving about briskly, pick- 
ing up scattered blankets and baby 
equipment. 

"I tried to make her rest," Jim 
explained, "but she said she felt 

fine." 

"You take it easy, Anna," the 
doctor told her. "And I want to 



talk to you later — as soon as I'm 
finished with the baby." 

'"I'm perfectly all right," she in- ' 
sisted. "I can't imagine what made 
me do anything so foolish. I'm 
awfully sorry ..." 

"Polly, I want yon to go to bed 
right away. You've had enough to- 
night — this morning, rather. Jim, 
you can handle the baby, can't 
you? You want to change him and 
get him ready for his feeding?" 

Jim stooped over his son at the 
wall bunk, his big hands fumbling 
a little with closures on the small 
garments. Tony sat down and 
leaned back, closing his eyes. The 
baby screamed steadily, demanding 
nourishment. 

"Doc, I still don't get it. How 
did you figure it out?" 

Patiently, without opening his 
eyes, Tony repeated his explanation 
for Jim. * 

'Til take your word for it," the 
man said finally, "but Til bo 
darned if I can understand it. Okay, 
Doc, I guess he's all fixed up." 

Tony stood up. "Do you know 
how to fix a bottle? I'll show you." 
"Here." Anna was at his elbow. 
"I thought you might want one/* 
she said, as though apologizing, 
and handed it over. 

"Thanks." Tony dashed a drop 
on his wrist — temperature just 
right — and passed it to Jim. "Let's 
try." 

The big man, looking absurdly 
cautious, put the bottle to Sunny's 
mouth. Then he looked up, a tre- 



MARS CHILD 



49 



mendous grin on his face and his 
eyes a little wet. "How do you like 
that?" he said softly. The little 
mouth and jaw were working away 
busily; Sunny was feeding as 
though he'd been doing it for 
months. 

They watched while he took a 
whole three and a half ounces, 
and then fell asleep, breathing 
quietly and regularly. 

"A Mars child/ 1 said Anna gent- 
ly, looking down at Sunny. "Jim, 
you have a real Mars child." 

"Looks that way," said Kandro, 
beaming. 

"Jim," said the doctor, "some- 
body ought to stay up and keep an 
eye on Sunny tonight, but I'm beat. 
And Polly's got to get some sleep. 
Will you do it?" 

"Sure, Doc," said the father, not 

taking his happy eyes off the child. 
"He'll probably need another 
feeding during the night. You 
know how to sterilize the bottle, 
and there's enough formula made 
up" 

, "Sure," said Jim. "You take care 
of Anna." 

"HI do that." 
• "Oh. Tony, I'm all right, I told 
you that — ,a 

"You get your parka, Anna, and 
don't argue with the doctor," Tony 
told her. "I'm going to take you 
home and see if I can find out 
what made you pull that swoon. 
Come on . . . If you need me for 
anything, Jim, I'll be at Anna's or 

at home." 



<<T (DO have a headache, she 

X admitted when they reached 
her house. "Probably all I need i 
a little sleep. I haven't been living 
right." She tried a smile, but it 
didn't come off. 

"None of us have," Tony re- 
minded her. He studied her and 
decided against aspirin. He select- 
ed a strong sedative and shot it 
into her arm. Within a minute, she 
relaxed in a chair and exhaled long 
and gratefully. "Better," she said. 

"Feel like talking?" 

"I — I think I ought to sleep." 

"Then just give me the bare 
facts." He ran his fingers over her 
head. "No blows. Was it a hang- 
over?" 

"Yes," she said defiantly. 

"Very depraved. From the one 
drink you had with us?" 

"From— from— Oh, hell!" That 
came from the heart, for Anna 
never swore. 

"IVc had enough mysteries for 
one night, Anna. Talk." 

"Maybe I ought to," she said 
unwillingly. "Only a fool tells a 
lie to his doctor or the truth to his 
lawyer, and so on." She hesitated. 
"I've got a trick mind. All tl^ 
people who think they're psychic — 
they are. I am, but more. It doesn't 
matter, does it?" 

"Go on/* 

"I didn't know about i: myself 
foe a long time. It's not like mind- 
reading; it's not that clear. I was 
always — oh, sensitive, but I didn't 
understand it at first, and then later 



50 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



on it seemed to get more and more- 
pronounced. I — haven't told any- 
one about it before. Not anyone at 
all." 

She looked at him appealingly. 
Tony reassured her, tf You know 
you can trust me/' 

"All right, I began to realize 
what it was when I was about 
twenty. That's why I became, of all 
things, a glassblower. If you had 
to listen to the moods and emo- 
tions of people, you'd want a job 
far away from everything in a one 
man department, too. That's why 
I came to Mars. It was too — too 
noisy on Earth." 

, "And that's why you're the best 
assistant I ever had, with or with- 
out an M.D. or R.N. on your 
name," said the doctor softly. 

"'You're easy to work with." She 
smiled. "Most of the time, it is. 
Sometimes, though, you get so 
angry—" 

HE thought back, remembering 
the times she'd been there 
before he had called, or had left 
quickly when she was in the way, 
handed him what he needed be- 
fore I he actually /bough/ ixboixt it. 
"Please don't get upset about it, 
Tony. I'd hate to have to stop 
working with you now. I don't 
know what you th'nik, just what 
you — feel, I guess. There are a lot 
of people like that/ really; you 
must have sensed i.t in me a long 
time back. It isn't really so very 

strange/' she pleaded. "I'm just a 



little— a little more that way; that's 
all." 

"I don't see why I should get 
upset about it," he tried to soothe 
her, and realized sickeningly mat 
it was a useless effort. He literally 
could not conceal his feelings this 
time. He stopped trying. "You musl 
realize how hard I try not to show 
I'm even angry. It is a little dis- 
concerting to find out— I'll get 
used to it. Just give me time." He 
was thoughtful for a. moment. 
"How does it work? Do you 
know?" 

"Not really. I 'hear' people's 
feelings. And — people seem to be 
more aware of my moods than they 
are of other people's: I — well, the 
way I first became aware of it wa^ 
when somebody tried to — assaul. 
me, back on Earth, in Chicago. I 
was very young then, not quite 
twenty. It was one of those awful 
deserted streets, and he ran faster 
than I could and caught up with mc. 
Something sort of turned on* — I 
don't know how to say it. I wa- 
sending instead of receiving, bv 
sending my emotion — -which, nat- 
urally, was a violent mixture of 
fear an d disgust — each mor 
strongly than — than people usuall 
can. I'm afraid I'm not making 
myself clear." 

"No wonder," he said heavily- 
"The language isn't built for ex- 
periences like that. Go on." 

"He fell down and flopped on 
the sidewalk like a fish, and I ran 

on and got to a busy street with- 



MARS CHILD 



51 



out looking back. I read the papers, 
but there wasn't anything about it, 
so I suppose he was all right after- 
ward." 

SHE stopped talking and jumped 
up restlessly. For quite a while 
she stood staring out of her win- 
dow, toward the dark reaches of 

Laius Solis. 

Finally she said in a strained 

voice, "Please, Tony, it's not really 
a; bad as that sounded. I can't send 
all the time; I can't do it mostly." 
She turned back to face him, and 
added more naturally: "Usually, 

people aren't as — open — as he was. 
And I guess I have to be pretty 
worked up, too. I tried to send to- 
night, and I couldn't do it. J tried 
awfully hard. That's why I had 
that headache." 

"Tonight?" 

Til tell you about that in a 
minute. Right now, I want — well, 
I told you I never told anyone 
about this before. It's important to 
me, Tony, iervjbly important, to 
make you understand. You're the 
first person I ever wanted to have 
understand it, and if you keep on 

" being frightened or unhappy about 
it, I just don't know — " 

She paused. "Let me tell you 
about it my way. I'll try to ignore 
whatever you feel while I'm telling 
it, and maybe when I'm done it 
will all be all right. 

"When that happened in Chi- 
cago — what I told you about — I 
had a job in an office. There was 



a girl I had to work with who 
didn't like me. It was very unpleas- 
ant. Every day for a month I tried 
to turn that 'send-receive' switch 
and transmit a calm, happy feeling 
to her, but I never could make it 
work. No matter how hard I tried, 
I couldn't get anything over to her. 
I knew what she felt, but her emo- 
tions were closed to mine, 'She 
didn't want to feel anything from 
me, so she didn't. Do you under- 
stand that? It's important, because 
it's true; you can protect yourself 
from that part of it. You believe 
me, don't you, Tony?" 

He didn't answer right away. 
He had to be absolutely certain in 
his own mind, because she would 
know. 

It would be far worse to tell 
her anything that wasn't true than 
to say nothing. 

Finally he got up and walked 
over to her, but he didn't dare 
speak. 

"Tony," she said, "you re— oh, 
please don't be embarrassed" and 
difficult about it, but you're so 
good J That's what I meant, you're 
isy to work with. Most people 
are petty and a lot of them are 
mean. The things they feel aren't 
nice; they* re mostly bitchy. But 
you — even when you're angry, it's a 
big, honest kind of anger. You 
don't want to hurt people, or get 
even, or take advantage of them. 
You're honest, and generous, and 
good. And now I've said too 
much!" 



52 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



He shook his head. "No, you 
didn't, k's all right. It really is." 

There were tears shining in her 
eyes. Standing over her, he reached 
mechanically for a tissue from his 
bag, tilted her head up, and wiped 
her eyes as if she were a child. 

"Now tell me more," he said, 
"and don't worry about how I feel, 
Wlu happened tonight? Tell me 
about the headache. And the faint- 
ing — was that part of it loo? Of 
course! What an idiot I am! The 
baby was choking and scared," and 
you screamed. You screamed and 
said to stop it." 

"Did .1? I wasn't sure whether I 
thought it or said it. That was 
strange, the whole business. It was 
terrible, somebody who hurt aw- 
fully all over and couldn't breathe, 
and was going to — to burst if he 

couldn't, and that didn't seem to 
make sense — and terribly hungry, 
and terribly frustrated, and — I 
didn't know who it was, because 
it was so strong. Babies don't have 
such 'loud' feelings. I guess it was 
the reflex of fear of dying, except 
Sunny is very loud, anyhow. When 
he was being born — " 

f; 

SHE shuddered involuntarily. "I 
was awfully glad you didn't 
think to ask me to stay in there 
with you. When you sent Jim out,. 
I talked to him, and sort of — con- 
centrated on listening' to him, and 
then, with the door closed, it was 
all right. (Anyhow, you want to 
know about tonight. The baby 

MARS CHILD 



topped it off. I don't think that 
would have made me faint, by it-" 
self, but I was working in then 

in the same room with Dough-. 
Graham for an hour or more, 
and—" 

"Graham!" Tony broke in. "Do 
you mean to say he dared to — " 

"Why, Tony, I didn't know you 
cared!" 

For the first time that evenin: 
she laughed easily. Then, without 
giving him time to think about how 
his outburst had given him away, 
she added: "He didn't do anything 
It was — it was about what he v 
writing, I think. I know what he 
was feeling. He was angry and 
disgusted and contemptuous. He 
hurt inside himself, and he ft' 
the way people do when they hurt 
somebody else. And it seemed to 

be all tied up with the story he w 
writing. It was a story about die 
Colony, Tony, and I got worried 
and frightened. If only I could I 
sure. See, that's the trouble. I 
didn't know whether to tell some- 
body or not, and I tried and tried 
to 'send* to him, but he wasn't 
open at all, and the only thin 
that happened was that I got thai 
headache." 

"Then when you came over to 
the Kandros\" Tony finished for 
her, "and the baby had all thai 
trouble, of course you couldn't take 
it Tell me more about Graham. I 
understand that you're not sure: 
tell me what you think, and why." 

"When Jim woke me up, wc 

53 



went back -to your place together, 
and Graham was working there," 
she said. "He asked me what the 
ccitement was all about and I told 
him. He listened, kept asking ques- 
tions, got every little detail out of 
me, and all the time he was feeling 
lhat hurt and anger. Then I started 
to work and he began banging 
away on his typewriter. And those 
thoughts got stronger and stronger 
till they made me dizzy, and then 
1 started trying to fight back, to 
send — and I couldn't. That's all 
there was to it." 

"That's all? You're sure?" 

She nodded. 

"And you can't be certain what 

it was that he was feeling that way 
about?" 

"How could I?" 

"Well, then/' he said, with a 

laugh of relief, "there's nothing 
at all to worry about. You made 
i natural enough mistake. Those 
feelings of his weren't directed 
against the Colony at all, Anna. 
Earlier tonight, after you left, Gra- 
ham promised to help us. He was 
writing a story about the spot we're 
n, that's all. and I know that he 
felt all the things you've described, 
but not about us, about Bell." He 
-at a moment longer. "I'm sure of 
it, Anna. That's the only way it 
makes sense." 

"It could be." She seemed a 

little dazed. "It didn't feel that way, 
but, of course, it could." She 
sighed and leaned back in her 
chair. "Oh, Tony, I'm so glad I 



told you. I didn't know what to 
do, and I was sure it was some- 
thing vicious he was writing about 
the Colony." 

. "Well, you can relax now. May- 
be I'll let you go to bed." He took 
her hands and pulled her to her 
feet. '"We'll work it out, even if I 
have to take a few new experiences 
in stride. Believe me, we'll work 
it out." 

She looked up at him, smiling 
gently. "I think so, too, Tony." 

* 

HE could have let her hands go, 
but he didn't. Instead, he 
flushed as he realized that even 
now she was aware of all his feel- 
ings. There were tears shining in 
her eyes again, and this time he 
couldn't reach for a tissue. He 
leaned down and kissed her damp 
eyelids; then he dropped one hand 
to brush away the moisture on her 
cheek. 

A thousand thoughts raced 
through his mind. .Earth, and Bell, 
and the Colony, now or forever or 
never. That time in the plane, 
thinking of Bea. Anna — Anna al- 
ways there at his side, helping, un- 
derstanding. 

"Anna," he said. He had never 
liked the name. "Ansie." There 
had been a little girl, a very long 
time ago, when he was a child, 
and her name had been Ansie. 

He released her other hand and 
cupped her upturned face in both 
of his. His head bent to hers, slow- 
ly and tenderly. There was no 



54 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



fierceness here, only the hint of 
growing passion. 

When he lifted his lips from 
hers, he laughed and said quietly: 
"It saves words, doesn't it?" 

"Yes." Her voice was small and 
husky. "Yes, it does . . . dear." 

If his mind was "open," he 
might feel what she did. Cautious- 
ly and warily, he reached out to 
her, with his arms and with h 
mind. He needed no questions and 
no answers now. 

"Ansie!" he whispered again, 
and lifted her slender body. 

* 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

TAD'S left ear itched; he let it. 
"Operator on duty will not 
remove headphones under any cir- 
cumstances until relieved — " There 
was a good hour before Gladys 
Porosky would show up to take 
over. 

"Mars Machine Tool to Sun 
Lake/' crackled the head-set sud- 
denly- He glanced at the clock and 
tapped out the message time on 
the log sheet in the typewriter be- 
fore him. 

"Sun Lake to Mars Machine 
Tool, I read you, G. A./' he said 
importantly. 

"Mars Machine Tool to Sun 
Lake, message. Brenner' Pharmaceu- 
tical to Marsport. Via Mars Ma- 
chine Tool, Sun Lake, Pittco 
Three. Request reserve two cubic 
meters cushioned cargo space out- 
going rocket. Signed Brenner. Re- 



peat, two cubic meters. Ack please, 
G. A." 

Tad said: "Sun Lake to Mars 
Machine Tool," and read back 
painstakingly from the log: "Mes 
sage. Brenner Pharmaceutical to 
Marsport. Via Mars Machine Tool. 
Sun Lake, Pittco Three. Signe 
Brenner. Repeat, two cubic meters. 
Received okay. T. Campbell, Oper- 
tor, End." 

TAD'S lingers were flying over 
the typewriter keyboard. Minn 
and Nick would want to know how 
the rocket was filling up. The tri 
was to delay your estimated re 
quiremenfcs to the last possible min- 
ute and then reserve a little mor 
than you thought you'd need. Re- 
serve too early and you might be 

stuck with space you couldn't fill 

but had to pay for. Reserve toe 

late and there might be no roor 
for your stuff until the next rocket. 

"Mars Machine Tool to Sun 
Lake, end," said the head -set. Tad 
started to raise Pittco' s operator, 
tl ic intermediate point betweei I 
Sun Lake and Marsport, to boot 
the message on the last stage of its 
journey. 

"Sun Lake to Pittco Three," he 
said into the mike. No answer. He 
went into "the buzz," droning: 
"Pittco Three, Pittco Three, Pittco 
Three, Sun Lake — M 

"Pittco Three to Sun Lake, I 
read you," came at last, mushily\ 
through the earphones. Tad was 
full of twelve-year-old scorn. Hall 



MARS CHILD 



55 



a minute to ack, and then probably 
with a mouthful of sandwich! "Sun 
Lake to Pittco Three," he said. 
"Message. Brenner Pharmaceutical 
to Marsport via Mars Machine 
Tool, Sun Lake, Pittco Three. Re- 
t juest reserve t wo cubic meters 
i ushioned cargo space outgoing 
cket. Signed Brem Repeat, 

I a'o cubic meters. Ack, please, 
(J. A." 

"Pittco to Sun Lake, message re- 
ived. Charlie Dyer, Operator, 
it." 

Tad fumed at the Pittco man's 
Soppiness and make-it-up-as-you-go 
procedure. Be a fine thing if every- 
body did that — messages would be 
;;arbled, short stopped, rocket- 
loading fouled up, people and car- 
goes miss their planes. 

He tapped out on the log sheet: 
"Pittco Operator C. Dyer failed to 
follow procedure, omitted confirm- 
ing repeat. T. Campbell." He omit- 
ted Dyer's irksome use of "out" 
instead of "end" and the other 
irregularities, citing only the legal- 
ly important error. That was just 
self-protection; if there were any 
errors in. the final message, the 
weak spot on the relay could be 
identified. But Tad was uncomfort- 
ably certain that (Dyer, if the report 
ever got back to him, would con- 
sider him an interfering brat. 

He bet Mr. Graham's last mes- 
sage had got respectful handling 
from Pittco, in spite of the pain- 
in-the-neck Phillips Newscode it 
had been couched in. They all 



• • r\* 



wanted Graham. Tad had received 
half a dozen messages for the 
writer extending the hospitality of 
this industrial colony or that. The 
man had good sense to stick with 
Sun Lake, the boy thought approv- 
ingly. There was this jam with the 
rocket and the commissioner, but 
the Sun Lakers were unquestion- 
>ly the best bunch of people on 
Mars. 

Pittco to Sun Lake," said 
Dyer's voice in the earphones. 

"Sun Lake to Pittco, I read you, 
G, A.," snapped Tad. 

"Pittco Three to Pittco One, 
message. Via Sun Lake, Mars Ma- 
chine Tool, Brenner Pharmaceuti- 
cal, Distillery Mars, Rolling Mills. 
Your outgoing rocket cargo space 
requirements estimate needed here 
thirty-six hours. Reminder down- 
hold cushioned space requests 
minimum account new tariff sched- 
ule. Signed, Hackenburg for Rey- 
nolds. Repeat, thirty-six hours, ack 
please, G. A." 

HUH ! Dyer repeated numbers 
on his stuff, all right! Tad 
acked and booted the message on. 
The machine shop in the "canal" 
confluence would get it, then the 
drug factory in the highlands dot- 
ted with marcaine weed, then the 
distillery among its tended fields of 
wiregrass, then the open hearth fur- 
naces and rolling mills in the red 
taconite range, and at last Pittco 
One, in the heart of the silver and 
copper country. 



56 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



He hoped he wouldn't have to 
handle any of Graham's long code 
jobs. Orders were to cooperate 
fully with the writer, but even 
Harve Stillman, who'd taken Gra- 
ham's story on his rocket trip and 
Marsport, had run into trouble 
with it. Tad loafed through the 
material to the coded piece by Gra- 
ham and shuddered. 

IT was okay, the. boy supposed, 
for on Earth, where you didn't 
want somebody tapping a PTM 
transmission beam and getting your 
news story, but why did the guy 
have to show off on Mars where 
the only way out was by rocket 
and you couldn't get scooped? 

"Marsport 18 to Pittco Three," 
he heard faintly in the earphones. 
Automatically he ran his finger 
down the posted list of planes. 
Marsport 18 was a four-engine 
freighter belonging to the Mars- 
port Hauling Company. 

"Pittco Three to Marsport 18, I 
read you, G. A." 

"Marsport 18 to Pittco, our esti- 
mated time of arrival is thirteen- 
fifty. Thirteen-fifty. We're bringing 

in your mail. End." 

"Pittco to Marsport 18, O. K., 
E.T.A. is thirteen-fifty and I'll tell 
Mr. Hackenburg. End." 

Mail, thought Tad enviously. All 
Sun Lake ever got was microfilmed 
reports from the New York office 
and business letters from custom- 
ers. Aunt Minnie and Cousin Adel- 
bert's wouldn't write to you unless 



you wrote to them; and Sun Lake 
couldn't lay out cash for space-mail 
stamps. 

Tad's ear itched. One thing he 
missed, he admitted to himself in 
a burst of candor, and he'd prob- 
ably have to go on missing it. The 
Sun Lake Society of New York 
couldn't spontaneously mail him 
the latest Captain Crusher Comix. 

He had read to tatters Volume 
CCXVII, Number 27, smuggled 
under his sweater from Earth. Ant I 
to this day he hadn't figured out 
how the captain had escaped from 
the horrible jam he'd been in on 
Page 64. There had been a Venus- 
ian Crawlbush on his right, a Mar- 
tian Brownie on his left, a Rigelian 
Paramonstcr drifting down from 
above and a Plutonian Bloodmole 
burrowing up from below. Well, 

the writers of Captain- Crusher 
knew their business, thought Tad, 
though they certainly didn't know 
much about Mars — the real Mars. 
Their hero never seemed to need 
OxEn or clothing any warmer than 
hose and cape when on a Martian 
adventure. And he was always 
stumbling over Brownies and dead 
cities and lost civilizations. 

Bunk, of course. Brownies, dead 
cities and lost civilizations would 
make Mars a more interesting 
place for a kid. vBut when a person 
grows up, other things mattered 
more than excitement. Things like- 
doing a good job and knowing it. 
Things like learning. Getting 
along. Probably, Tad thought in 



MARS CHILD 



57 



comfortably, getting married some 

day. 

"Mars Machine Tool to Sun 
Lake. Sun Lake, Sun Lake, Sun 
Lake, Mars Machine Tool, Sun 
Luke—" 

"Sun Lake to Mars Machine 
Tool, I read you, G. A.," Tad 
lapped, peeved. 

The operator might have waited 
just a second before he went into 
i he buzz. 

"Mars Machine Tool to Sun 
akc, message. Pittco One to Pittco 
Three. Via Rolling Mill, Distillery 
Mars, Brenner Pharmaceutical, 
Mars Machine Tool, Sun Lake, out- 
going rocket cargo space require- 
ments are: ballast, (thirty-two cubic 
meters; braced antishi ft, twelve 
point seventy-live cubic meters;, 
lass- lined tank, fifteen cubic me- 
ters; cushioned, one point five cu- 
bic meters. Regret advise will re- 
quire steerage space one passenger, 
F.Y.I. , millwright's helper Chuck 
Kelly disabled by marcaine addic- 
tion." 

The repeats followed and Tad 
briskly receipted. He raised Pittco 
Three and booted the message, 
;rinning at a muffled "God damn 
it!" over the earphones as he 
droned out .the bad news about 

Kelly. Steerage passenger space 
didn't come as high as cushioned 
cargo cubage; a steerage passenger 
was expected to grab a stanchion, 
hang on and take his lumps during 
a rough landing; but it was high 

enough. 



SUN LAKE couldn't afford 
cushioned cubage, ever, and 
settled tor braced antishilt. Some- 
times crates gave and split under 
the smashing accelerations, but the 
cash you had to lay out for cargo 

protected springs, hydraulic sys- 

t cms and meticulous stowage by 
t he superca rgo himself wasn 't 
there. It meant a disgruntled cus- 
tomer every once in a while, but 
the tariffs nude you play it that 
way. 

The door behind him opened 
and closed. "Gladys?" he asked. 
"You're early." 

"It's me, sonny," said a man's 
voice — Graham's. "You mind -filing 
a little copy for me2" 

The newsman handed him a 
couple of onionskin pages. "Phil- 
lips Newscode," he sajd, "Think 
you can handle it?" 

M I guess v so," said Tad unhap- 
pily. "We're supposed to cooperate 
with you." Blankly he looked at 
the sheets and asked: "Why bother 
to code it, though?" 

"It saves space, for one thing. 
You get about five words for one. 
'GREENBAY/ for instance, means 
'An excited crowd gathered at the 
Scene/ THREEPLV means 'In 
spite of his, or their, opposition.' 
And, for another thing, what's th< 
point of my knowing the code if 
I nevei use it?" He grinned to 
show he was kidding. 

Tad ignored the grin and re- 
marked: "I thought that was it." 

He entered the time in the I 



58 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



and said into the mike: "Sun Lake 
to Pittco Three." Pittco acked. 

"Sun Lake to Pittco Three; long 
Phillips 'Newscode message, Sua 
Lake to Marsport. Via Pittco Three. 
Message: Microfilm following text 
and hold for arrival Douglas Gra- 
ham Marsport and pickup at 
Administration Building. GREEN- 
DAY PROGRAHAM SUNLAKE 
STOP POSTTWO ARGUAB LE 
IUZZERS MARSEST BRIGHT- 
EST STOP AROU ABLEST 
MARSING MYFACED GIN- 
ILOOZERS DOPEBORT PEL- 
KIL PARA UNME SUNLAKE 
HOCFOCUS COPLOGKED ET- 
ERS EARTHED STOP SAPQUIS- 
FACT HOCPLAGUER ER- 
QUICK— " 

GRAHAM heard the last of the 
sjory go out and saw the kid 
note down the acknowledgment in 
the log. 

"Good job/' the gunther said. 
•'Thanks, fella." 

Outside, the chilly night air 
fanned his face. It had been a dirty 
little trick to play on the boy. 
They'd give him hell when they 
found out, but the message had to 
clear and that Stillman knew a 
little Phillips — enough to wonder 
and ask questions. 

Graham took a swig from his 
pocket flask and started down the 
street. He'd needed the drink, and 
he needed a long walk. It was 
surgery, he told himself, but surg- 
ery wasn't always pleasant for the 



surgeon. That doctor might be able 
to understand if he could only step 
back and see the thing in perspe^ 
tive. As it was, Tony obviously be- 
lieved Mrs. Kandro's absurd story 
about somebody doping the beans. 
The writer grinned sardonically. 
What a cesspool Mars must be if 
even these so-called idealists were 
so corrupted ! Marcaine addiction 
by a brand-new mother, theft of a 
huge quantity of marcaine clearly 
traced to the Colony. The doctor 
. would hate him and think him two- 
faced, which -lie was. It was part of 
the job. He was going to start an 
avalanche; a lot of people would 
hate him for it. 

An impeccable, professional 
hatchet job on Sun Lake was the 
lever that would topple the 'boul- 
der to start the avalanche. Senators 
would posture and declaim, bills 
would be written and rewritten by 
legislative clerks, but that would 
be just the dust over the rumbling 
rocks. 

The public relations boys of the 
industrials used to be newspaper- 
men themselves, and they could 
pick their way through Phillips. 
The word would be passed like 
lightning. They'd learn, to their 
horror, (that it wasn't .uoing to be a 
cheerful travelog quickie like his 
last two or three; that Graham was 
out for blood. The coded dispatch 
would be talked over and worried 
over in most of Mars' administra- 
tion buildings tonight. They would 
debate whether he was gping to 



MARS CHILD 



59 



put the blast on all the colonics. 
But they'd note that he pinned all 
the guilt so far on Sun Lake, not 
mentioning specifically that the 
abortion and the prostitution had 
occurred a»t Pittco. 

So, by tomorrow morning, he'd 
let one of the industrials send a 
plane for him. He'd been playing 
hard to get for two days — long 
enough. He'd put on his jovial 
mask and they'd fall all over them- 
selves dishing the dirt on each 
other. He'd make it a point to pass ' 
through Brenner Pharmaceutical. 
Quasi-legal operators like Brenner 
always knew who was cutting cor- 
ners. And Bell — what tills did he 

have his hand in? 

Graham knew there wasn't an- 
other newsman alive who could 
swing it — the first real story to 
come out of Mars besides press 
handouts front the industrials. And 
the planet was rotten-ripe for it. 

But, mostly, he would just scare 
them, »be the scoring, good-hu- 
mored know-it-all, so cheerfully 
sinister that they'd try to buy him 
off with dirt about the other out- 
fits. He'd make no open promises, 
DC open thrrats, and it all would 
-drop into his lap the way it always 
had. 

No, not always, he grimly cor- 
rected himself. Once he'd been a 
green kid reporter, lucky enough 

to break the Bell scandal. He'd ac- 
tually been sorry for the crook. 
There'd been a lot of changes since. 
It was funny what happened to 



you when you got into the upper 
brackets. 

FIRST you grabbed and grabbed. 
Women, a penthouse with 

two-acre living room, silk shirts 

"bulk" for you instead of the n\ 
Ion all the paycheck stiffs wor 
"beefsteaks" broiled over bootleg 
charcoal made of real wood from 
one of Earth's few thousand acres 
of remaining trees. 

You grabbed and grabbed, and 
then you got sick of grabbing. You 
felt empty and blank and worked 
like hell to make yourself think 
you were happy. And then, if you 
were lucky, you found out who 

you were. 

Graham had found out that he 
— the youngest one, underfed, the 
one the big boys ganged up on for 
snitching, the one the cop called a 
yellow little liar, the one nobody 
liked, the one who always got his 
head knucked when they played 
Nigger Inna Graveyard — yes, he 
had power. It was the monstrous 
energy of: -Earth's swarming bil- 
lions. If you could reach them, you 
could have them. You could slash 
down what was rotten and corrupt; 
a thieving banker, a bribed com- 
missioner, a Mars colony. 

Under the jovial mask it hurt 
when they called you a sensational- 
ist, said you were unanalytical, had 
no philosophy, couldn't do anything 
but set down facts to titillate the 
uncritical audience. But what you 
could do and they couldn't was stir 



40 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 






(the billions of Earth, make them 
laugh, make them hopeful, make 
them rage — and when they raged, 
focus their rage to a white-hot spot 
that cauterized a particular bit of 
rottenness. 

Graham stumbled and took a 
swig from his flask. 

Who had to have a philosophy? 
What was wrong with exposing 
crackpots ,mtl crooks? Tfye first real 
news story out of Mars would break 
up the Sun Lake Colony. Som< 
good would go with the bad; the 
-surgeon had no choice. That Kan- 
dro woman and her baby! 'The 
child belonged on jEarth. And it 
would go there. The little thing 
would never know if not for Gra- 
ham that there was anything but 
Mars. I'm supposed to be hard- 
boiled, he thought, a little drunk 
and sentimental, but I know what's 
right for that kid. 

"Hey!" he said. Where the hell 
was he, anyway? Wandering in the 
desert, high as a kite on.ihis expect- 
ed triumph. His feet had led him 
down the Colony street, along the 
path to the airfield, past it and a 
few kilometers toward the Rimrock 
Hills. He blamed it on the Mars 
gravity. Your legs didn't tire here, 
for one thing. The radio shack light 
was plain behind him; dimmer and 
off to the left of it shone the win- 
dows of the Lab, merged in one 
beacon. 

The radio shack light went out 
and then on again. A moment later, 
so did the light from the Lab. 



"Power interruption/' he said. 
"Or I blinked." 

_ It happened again, first the radio 
shack and then the Lab. And then 
it happened once more. 

The writer took out his flask and 
gulped. "Who's out there?" he 
yelled. 'Tm Graham!" 

There wasn't any answer, but 
something came whistling out of 
the darkness at him, striking his 
parka and falling to the ground. 
He fumbled for it while still try- 
ing fto peef through the night for 
whatever had passed between him 
and the lights of Sun Lake. 

"What <lo you want?" he yelled 
into the darkness hysterically. "I'm 
Graham! The writer! Who are 

Something whizzed at him and 
hit his shoulder, 

"Gut that out!" he shrieked, and 
began to run for the lights of Sun 
Lake. He had taken only a few 
steps when something caught at his 
leg and he floundered onto th 
ground. The next and last thing 
he felt was a paralyzing blow on 
the back of his head. 

CHAPTER NINETEEN 

TONY woke up in time for 
breakfast, an achievement in 
itself. He'd had, at best, some hun- 
dred and fifty minutes of sleep 
after a long and hard day, and that 
interrupted by emergency, crisis, 
and triumph. 

He washed without noticing the 



MARS CHILD 






61 




stench of the alcohol. He noted the 
time; good thing there was no Lab 
inspection to do this morning. He 
noticed the closed bedroom door; 
good thing he'd so hospitably given 
up his own bed to Graham, consid- 
ering the unexpected turn of events 



the night before. He threw his 
parka over his shoulders and 
stepped out into the wan sunlight, 
oblivious to the lingering chill; 
good thing he — 

Good thing he could still laugh 
at himself, he decided. What was 




GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION - 



the old saw about all the world 

loving a lover? Nothing to it — it 
was the lover who loved the whole 
world. Love, lover, lovh he 
rolled the words around in his 
mind, trying to tell himself that 
nothing had really_changed. All the 
old problems were still there, and 
a new one, really, taken on. 

But that wasn't so. Graham had 
spent half (he night writing his 
promised story. Sunny Kandro was 
all right at last. And Anna. — Ansie 
— a problem? He cduld remember 
thinking, in the distant past, as 
long as two days ago, that such an 
involvment would present prob- 
lems, but he couldn't for the life 
of him remember what they were 
supposed to have been. 

HE went in to breakfast, not 
trying to conceal his exuber- 
ance, and sat down between Harve 
Stillman and Joe Graeey. 

"What's got into you?" Harve 
asked. 

"Something good happen?" Gra- 
ccy demanded. 

Tony nodded. "The Kandro 
baby," he explained, using the hrst 
thing that popped into his head. 
"Jim woke me up last night. Polly 
was — was having trouble with the 
baby," he hastily amended the 
story. 

He'd have to tell Graccy about 
the marcaine. There was a problem 
.ifter all, but this wasn't the place 
for it; a Council meeting after 
breakfast maybe. 



"You know we've been having 
feeding trouble all along/' he ex- 
plained. "I found the trouble last 
night. I don't understand it, but it 
works. I took Sunny 's mask off." 

"You what?" 

"Took his mask off; he doesn't 
need it. Eats fine without it, too. 
Trouble was, he couldn't breathe 
tli rough his mouth and eat at the 
same time." 

"Well, I'll be— How do you 

figure it T x 

"Hey, there's a story for the gun- 
ther/' Harve suggested. " 'Medical 
Miracle on Mars/ and all that stuff. 
Where is he anyhow? 1 ' 

"Still sleeping, I guess. The bed- 
room door was closed/' 

"Did you talk to him last night?" 
Gracey asked. 

Tony attacked his plate of fried 
beans, washed them down with a 
gulp of "coffee/' and told the 
other man about Graham's prom- 
ise. "He was up half the night 
writing, too. I heard him while I 
was examining the baby/* 

"Did he show it to you?" 

"Not yet. He was asleep when 
I got back." 

Harve pushed back his chair 
with a grunt of satisfaction. "I feel 
better already," he grinned. "First 
decent meal I've had in days. 
What's the program for today, 
Dot ? You going to need me on 
radiological work?" 

"I don't think so. I'll let you 
know if we do, after Joe and I get 
together with the others. Got time 



MARS CHILD 



63 



for a meeting after breakfast?" he 
asked the agronomist, and Gracey 
nodded. 

"Okay, 1*11 be in the radio shack 
if you want me," Harve said. "The 
kids took over all day yesterday. 
Don't like to leave them too long 
on their own." 

"Right. But I don't think we'll 
need you." 

That marcaine business — how in 
all that was 'holy, the doctor won- 
dered, did anybody get marcaine 
onto Polly's beans? After all the 
searching, in the middle of the 
hunt, who would do it? Why? And 
above all, how? 

Maybe one of the others would 
have an angle on it. 



ii 



«/~VNE thing I'm glad about/' 
\J Gracey said soberly. "We 
did make a thorough search. What- 
ever happens from here on out, at 
least we've proved to our own sat- 
isfaction that nobody in Sun Lake 
stole the stuff." 

"That's nke to know/ 1 Mimi 
agreed with considerably less feel- 
ing. "But frankly, I'd almost feel 
better if v we had found it. I'd glad- 
ly turn the bum who took it over 
to Bell's tender mercies, if it was 
one of us. This way, we have to 
depend on Graham. You're sure 
he's with us?" She looked ques- 
tioningly from the doctor to the 
electronics man. 

How sure can you get?" Nick 



\\ 



shrugged. "He said so. Now we 
wait to see his story, that's all." 

"I don't think we have to worry 
about that," Tony said briefly. He 
couldn't tell them any more. He 
was sure ihimself, but how could 
he explain without giving away 
Anna's secret? "Look," he went on 
briskly, "there's something else we 
do have to think about. I -told you 
about Sunny Kandro, Joe. There's 
more to it than what d said at 
breakfast." 

Nick and Mimi both sat forward 
with new interest, as Tony repeat- 
ed the news about the removal of 
Sunny's mask. He cut off their 
questions. "I didn't tell you how 
it started, though. Jim came to get 
me, not for the baby, but for 

Polly." 

A sharp rap on the door stopped 

him. Harve Stillman walked in. 
His face was grim; he carried a 
familiar sheaf of onionskin pages 
in his hands. 

1 'What's the matter, Harve ?" 
Mimi demanded. "Aren't you sup- 
posed to be on shift in the radio 
shack?" 

"That's right. I walked out." 
"No relief?" she snapped. "Are 
you sick?" 

' "I'm sick, all right. And it 
doesn't make any difference now 
whether radio's manned or not." 
He slapped the onionskin onto the 
table, and threw down on top of it 
two sheets of closely written radio 
log paper. "There you are, folks, 
have a look. It's all down in black 



64 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



and white. That's the translation 
on the log sheets. The bastard filed 
it in Phillips, so Tad wouldn't 
know what he was sending. When 
I think what a sucker I was, letting 
him pump me about who knew 
newscode around here! Go on, 

read it!" 

Mimi picked up the sheets and 
glanced at the penciled text. Her 
face went white. She reached for 
the onionskin, glanced at it, and 
returned her eyes to the log sheets. 
In a minute she looked up again. 

"Harve, there couldn't be any 
mistake?" 

"I know the code," he said, 
bluntly. 

"Hey," Nick protested, "could 
you maybe let us in on it?" 

"f^ERTAINLY," she smiled bit- 

\J terly. "This is the story 
written for us by D. Graham, your 
friend and mine. T was greeted by 
a frightened crowd on my arrival 
at Sun Lake, and no wonder. After 
two days in 'this community, I am 
able to reply to the head s-in- the- 
clouds idealists who claim that on 
M<irs lies the hope of the human 
race. My reply is that on Mars I 
immediately came face-to-face into 
drunkenness, prostitution, narcot- 
ics, criminal abortion, and murder. 
It is not for me to say whether 
this means that Sun Lake Colony, 
an apparent center of these activi- 
ties, should be shut down by law 
and its inmates deported to Earth. 
But I do know- 



i tt 



"That's crazy!" Nick broke in. 
"I heard him say myself — " He 
stood up angrily. 

Tony reached out a hand to re- 
strain him. "He didn't promise 
damn thing, Nick. We just lu.nd 
it that way. He said he'd do a 
story, that's all." 

"That's enough for me,*' Can- 

trella replied. "Me promise J, and 
he's by God going to keep his 
promise." 

"Sit doxen, Nick," Mimi - inter- 
rupted. "Beating Graham up isn't 
going to solve anything. Harve, you 
get back on duty, and buzz one of 
the kids to go over to Tony's and 
collect Graham. If he's asleep, tell 
them to wake him up. We'll go 
through the rest of this while we're 
waiting.'' She eyed the sheets of 
paper distastefully. 

Harve slammed the door behind 
him, and Mimi turned to (the oth- 
ers. 'Tm sorry. I should have 
checked with you first. Every time 
something goes wrong, I start giv- 
ing orders as if I owned the place. 
Here." She handed the sheets to 
Joe Gracey, still sitting quietly .to 
her left. "You look calm. You read 
it." 

Joe took ithe papers and went on 
where she had stopped before. 

M He can't do that!" Nick pro- 
tested furiously, when Joe finished. 
"That story is full of lies! The 
murder wasn't here. Neither was 
most of the other stuff. How can 
he—" 

"He did/' Tony pointed out. 



MARS CHILD 



65 



"How much convincing do you 
need?" 

"It's carefully worded," Gracey 
said. "Most of it isn't lies at all, 
just evasions and implications." 

"We've got to assume he's smart 
enough to write a libel-proof 
story." Mi mi had recovered her 
briskness. "There's one place I 
think he slipped, though. Can I 
see those sheets of Graham's again, 

Joe r 

HER eyes were shining when 
she looked up again. "We've 
got him!" she said. "I'm sure of 
it! Let's call in O'Donnell and get 
his opinion on it. This stuff about 
Polly." She read aloud: " \ . . th 
young mother of a newborn baby, 
unable to feed her infant beca 

of her hopeless addiction to mar- 
caine. This reporter was present .it 
a midnight emergency when the 
Colony's doctor was called to sa\ 
the child from the ministrations of 
its hysterical mother , . .' Tony, 
you can testify to that!" 

"I don't know/' said the doc- 
tor, painfully. "Sure, I realize 
Polly's not an addict, but — that's 
what J was starting to tell you 
when Harve came in. That's what 
Jim got me up for last night. Polly 
was sick, and there's no doubt that 
it was a dose of marcaine that was 
responsible." 

' "What?" 
"Polly?" 

"But she couldn't fc>e the one. 

She wa: 



"How did Graham find out 
about it?" 

Tony waited till the questions 
stopped, then gave them the whole 
story, from the time Jim Kandro 
roared into his house at one o'clock 
in the morning, right through the 
removal of the mask. 

*"We were both asleep when 
Kandro came in," he explained, 
"and the noise woke Graham too. 
I didn't see him again myself, but 
I heard him typing when I was in 
the hospital with the baby. And 
Ans — Anna told me she talked to 
him while she was making the 
bottles. She had no reason to hold 
back any information. I told her 
myself that he was writing a friend- 
ly story." 

"Well, that fixes us, but good. 
Where did Polly get the stuff?" 
Nick demanded. "We've hunted 
every inch of this place looking for 

marcaine; how come it didn't show 

up?" 

"I've been trying to figure that 
myself," Tony said. "I don't think 
she got it. Her reactions were not 
those of a marcaine user, and I'd 
swear she was as shocked as she 
said she was when I diagnosed it. 
The stuff was put there — and don't 
ask me who, or why, because I 
can't even begin to guess." 

■'Well, we've got our hands 
full," Miffii said thoughtfully. 
"Where do we start? It seems to 
me the same answer is going to 
settle two of our problems. Where 
did Polly's marcaine come from, 



66 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



and how arc we ever going to get 
out of this impossible situation with 
Bell?" 

"That's not all/' Nick added 
grimly. "Wc can solve both of 
those, and still get booted off Mars 
when this story breaks." 

"That's a separate matter. All I 
can do about thai is try and talk 
to Graham — or prove to him that 
at least part of the story is libelous. 
Come in," Mimi called, in answer 
to a knock outside. 

Gladys Porosky pushed the door 
open and announced breathlessly: 
"We can't find him. We looked all 
over and he's not any place." 

"Graham?" Tony jumped to his 
feet. "He was asleep in my bed- 
room; I left him there. He has to 
be around." 

GLADYS shook her head. "We 
opened the door when he 
didn't answer, and he wasn'-t there. 
Then we scattered; all the kids 
have been looking. He's not at the 
Lab, or in the fields, and he's not 
in any of the houses. Nobody's 
seen him all morning." 

"Thanks, Gladys," Mimi cut her 
short. "Will you try to find Jack 
O'Donnell for me? Ask him to 
come over here." 

"Okay." She slammed out of the 
door, leaving a whirlwind of babble 
and excitement behind her. 

"I suppose he's skipped," Tony 
said. "Probably messaged one of 
the industrial outfits in that damn 
code of his, and got picked up dur- 



11 



ing the night. His bags are 

at my place, though — I saw them 

this morning. That's funny." 

"Very funny," Nick echoed 
glumly. "Ha, ha." 

"What's luggage to a guy who 
can write like that?" Graccy asked. 
"He can get all the hig^age he 
wants just by wiping out another 
plague spot like us." . 

O'Donnell came in, and they 
waited in tense silence while the 
ex-lawyer read through Harve's 
penciled translation. "Only possi- 
ble libelous matter I see is about 
the marcaine-addict mother. What's 
all that?" 

They told him, and he shook his 
head. "No more chance in a court 
of law than a snowball in hell," he 
said flatly. 

"But I don't care how he word- 
ed it. The story's not true." 

"How many stories are? If truth 
or justice made any difference in 
the JZarth courts, I wouldn't be 
here. I loved the law. The way it 
looked in the books, that is. I guess 
I'll have to pass my bar examina- 
tions all over again. Mars is under 
the Pan State, but I suppose this 
constitutes interrupted residence 
anyway. 

"Big fat chance you'll have of 
getting to take your bar exams after 
that smear," said Gracey. "I'm not 
kidding myself about getting to 
teach college again. If I can get 
some money together, I'm going to 
try commercial seaweeds." 

"God help Sargasso Limited, ' 



MARS CHILD 



67 



said Nick Cantrella. "And God 
help Consolidated Electronic when 
I start my shop again in Denver. 
It took them three months to run 
me into bankruptcy last trip 
around, but 1*11 get them up to 
four tthis time. They can't stand 
much of that kind of punishment." 
"Let's not jump to conclusions," 
Mi mi said, with the quiver back 
in her determinedly businesslike 
voice. "Let's assume Graham's 
skipped and the story's going 
through. We might still be able 
tc hang on if we can square our- 
selves with Bell." 

"Bell and Graham have no use 
for each other," Tony said. "May- 
be this will make Bell easier to 
deal with." 

"Tli at I doubt. Let's figure on 
the worst. Suppose we can't con- 
vince Bell. We'll have two possible 
courses of action. We can sell out 
fast. From what I understand of 
this situation, I'm sure that the 
Commissioner would iind a legal 
loophole for us on the marcaine 
deal if we decided to sell to, for 
instance, iBrcnner. If we do that, 
we can pay off what money we owe 
on Earth, book passage for our 
members, and, with luck, have a 
few dollars left over to divide be- 
tween us." She smiled humorlessly. 
"You might even have a capital in- 
vestment of five or ten -dollars, 
Nick, to start working on Con- 
Electron." 

"Good enough/' he said. "It'll 
give me courage — if I can still find 



a bar with a five-buck beer, that 



is." 



"That," Mimi went on, "would 
be the smart thing to do. But 
there's another way. We can hang 
on through the cordon, hoping to 
prove our point. It leaves us some 
hope, but it leaves us penniless, 
even if we manage to stick out the 
six months. Whatever cash or 
credit we have on hand we'll have 
to pay out for OxEn. Don't think 

Bell is going to let us have the stuff 
free. Meanwhile, our accounts pay- 
able keep coming due, and accumu- 
lating interest. There's a good 
chance that long before the six 
months are up well be forced into 
involuntary bankruptcy. That's how 
Pittco got Economy Metals last 
year." 

"Like the cat got the canary," 
said Nick. 

"Yes. We'd then be shipped 
back to Earth as distress cases, with 
a prior lien on our future earnings. 
If any." 

MIMI sat down and Tony 
studied her handsome face 

as if he were seeing it for the first 
time. She'd been way up in the 
auditing department of a vast in- 
surance company - once. It would 
be hard on her. It would be hard 
on them all. But he wanted to yell 
and beat down doors when he 
thought of what it would mean to 
Anna, phmged back into the 

screaming hell of .Earth's emotional 

"noise" that she couldn't block out. 



68 



OALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



He tried to think like a schemer, 
and^ knowing that it wouldn-t 
work, told himself: You marry 
Anna, take Brenner's offer — it's 
still open; good doctors aren't that 
easy to come by on Mars — and you 
set her up in a decent home. But 
the whole thing crumbled under its 
own weight. She wouldn't marry a 
doctor whose doctoring was to< 
patch up marcaine factory hands 
when they sniffed too much of the 
stuff. 

"Eh?" he asked. Somebody was 
talking to him. 

"Sell now, or hang on?" Mimi 
patiently repeated. 

"I want to think about it," he 
told her. 

The others felt the same way. It 
wasn't a thing you could make up 
your mind about in a few minutes, 
not after the years and years of 
always thinking one way: Colony 
survival. To have to decide now 
which way to kill the Colony . . . 

The meeting broke up incon- 
clusively. There was some recrat- 
ing still to be done. The Lab had 
to be back to production, get this 
rocket's shipments ready just in 
case. And maybe by the time those 
chores were done, one oP them 
would have some notion of how 
to start all over again, looking for 
the mysterious marcaine. 

Tony headed out to the Lab, 
racking his brains for an answer. 
But halfway there, he found to his 
chagrin that he wasn't serious at 
all. He was striding along freely 



in the clean air and light gravity, 
to the rhythmic mental chant: 
Ansie — Anna — Ann — Ansie — 

■ 

CHAPTER TWENTY 

JOAN RADCLIFF lay almost 
peacefully, drugging herself 
against the pain in her limbs and 
head by a familiar reverie of which 
she never tired. She saw Sun Lake 
Colony at some vague time in the 
future, a City of God, glowin 
against the transfigured Martian 
desert, spiring into the Martian air, 
with angelic beings vaguely recog- 
nizable in some way as the original 
colonists. 

Her Hank, the bold explorer, 
with a bare-chested, archaic, sword- 
girt look; Doctor Tony, calm and 
wise and very old, soothing ills 
with miraculous lotions and calm- 
ing troubled minds with dignified 
counsel; Mtmi Jonathan, revered 
and able, disposing" of this and that 
with sharp, just terseness; Anna 
Willendorf mothering hundreds 
serenely; brave Jim and Polly Kan- 
dro and their wonderful <iiild, the 
hope of them all. 

She wasn't there herself, but it 
was all right because she had done 
something wonderful for them. 
They all paused and lowered their 
voices when they thought of her. 
She, the sick and despised, had in 
the end surprised and awed them 
all by doing something wonderful 
for them, and they paid her mem- 
ory homage. 



MARS CHILD 



4f 



Nagging reality, never entirely 
silent, jeered at her that she was a 
useless husk draining the Colony's 
priceless food and water, giving 
nothing in return. She shifted on 
the bed. 

iPains shot through her joints 
and her heart labored. You're as 
good as they are, whispered the 
tempter; you're better than they are. 
How many of them could stand the 
pain and not murmur, never think 

of anything but the good of the 
Colony? But I'm not, she raged 
back. Vm not. I shouldn't have got 
sick: I can't pork now; they have 
to nurse me. But you didn't drink 
any water until Tony made you, 
said the tempter. Wasn't that more 
than any of them would do? Won't 
they be sorry when you're dead and 
i hey find out how you suffered? 

She tried to fix her tormented 
mind on her Hank, but he had a 
sullen, accusing stare. She was ty- 
ing him down; if they sent her 
back to Earth, he'd have to go too. 
They wouldn't let him stay in the 
Colony. 

■ 

SHE wished Anna hadn't left, 
and swallowed the thought 
painfully. Anna's time belonged to 

the Colony and not to her. It was 
nasty of her to want Anna to stay 
with her so much. She straightened 
one puffy leg and felt a lance of 
pain shoot from toes to groin;' she 
bared her clenched teeth but didn't 
let a whimper escape her. 

That teas very good, said the 



- 







70 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



tempter. None of them could do 

I bat. 

Anna had propped her up in 
bed before, so she could look out 
the window. Now she turned her 
head slowly and looked out. 

/ see through the ivindow, she 
told herself. / see across the Colony 
street to a corner oj the Kandro? 
hut with a little of their street side 
window showing. I see Polly Kan- 
dro cleaving the inside of the 
window, but she doesn't see me. 
Noiv she's coming out and cleaning 
the outside of the window. Now 
she turns and sees me and waves 
and I smile. Now she takes her 
cloth and goes around her hut to 
clean the back wi??doiv and I can't 
see her any more. ' 

And now something glides down 
the Colony street with Sunny Kan- 
dro in its thin brown arms. 

And now Polly runs around her 
hut again, her face white as chalk , 
tries family to call me, wave to we, 
and falls down out of sight. f 

Joan knew what she ought to 
do, and she tried. The intercom 
button had been put in so she had 
only to move her hand a few 
inches. She reached out for the 
button, and held her finger on it, 
but there was no answering click. 
It was a few seconds and maybe 
minutes, and the thing that had 
stolen Pollys baby was gone down 
the other end of the street. 

The sick girl sat up agonizingly 
and thought: / can do something 
now. They won't be able to say I 



waS foolish, because if I ivait any 
longer I won't be able to catch up; 
it will be too far away. There's no- 
body else to do it except Polly, and 
she fainted. It has to be done right 
away. I can't ivait for them to an- 
swer and then come from the Lab. 

Joan stood up, stumped over to 
the canteen on the wall and tilted 
it for a long, long drink of cool 
water. It tasted good. She lurched' 
out of the hut and stood for a mo 
ment, looking at the crumpled body 
of Polly. 

Poor Polly, she thought as her 
heart thudded and faltered. Wc 
must help one another. 

She shaded her eyes against the 
late morning sun and looked up 
and past the Colony street through 
the clear Mars air. There was a 
moving dot passing the airfield 
now, and she started after it, one 
step, two steps, three steps, as the 
City of God reformed in her mind 
and her eyes never left the moving 
dot. 

EARTH would be gone, a dead 
thing swimming in the deeps 
of space, a grave example for 
children. See? You must not hate, 
you must not fear, you must al- 
ways help or that will happen to 
us- You must be kind and like peo- 
ple; you mustn't make weapons 
because you never know where 
making weapons will end. 

And the children would ask 
curiously what it was like, and their 
elders would tell them it was 



MARS CHILD 



71 



crowded and dirty, that nobody 
ever had enough to eat, that people 
poured poison into the air and pre- 
tended it didn't matter. That it 
wasn't like Sun Lake, their spacious, 
clean, sweet-smelling home, that 
there wouldn't have been any Sun 
Lake if not for the great pioneers 
like Joan Radcliff who suffered and 
died for them. / 

She wept convulsively at the pain 
in her limbs as she stumped across 
the desert rocks. They sliced her 
bare fee* but she dared not look 
down ahead of her for fear of los- 
ing that swimming, moving dot she 

followed. Magic, she thought. Fix a 

fairy with your eye and away it 
cannot fly. Her heart — she could 
feel it thudding ponderously as a 
fnassive new pain burned through 
her left shoulder and arm. 

1 have done what I could, she 
thought. Hank, you are free. She 
fell forward and dragged her 
sprawled fight arm along the 

ground so that it pointed to the 
moving dot and the Rimrock Hills 
beyond it. 



11 



SOMEBODY grabbed him by 
the arm and motioned to his 
helmet. Tony stared a moment, un- 
comprehending, then switched on 
the helmet radio. 

"What's up?" 

"Joan— Joan Raddiff!" It was 

one of Mimi's young assistants in 
the Lab office. "She picked up the 



intercom and buzzed it. When I 
answered it, it went dead." 

"I'll be xight out" The doctor 
made it on the double, in spite of 
the hampering suit, out of the ship- 
ping room and into the shower. 
He would have given a year of his 
own life to be able to speed up 
the decontamination process this 
one time, but he'd been near the 
open crates. It wouldn't help Joan 
if he exposed himself, and her, 

too, to radiation disease. 

He ran the distance* from the 
Lab to the street of houses. He was 
still running when he approached 
the Kandros' hut, and almost 
missed seeing Polly's limp figure 
in the road. Thoroughly bewild- 
ered, he picked' her up and looked 
around for help. There was no one 
in sight. 

A moment's indecision, and 
then, quickly, he carried Polly to- 
ward the RadclifF hut and deposit- 
ed her gently on the wall bunk in 
the living room. Pulse and respira- 
tion okay; she would keep. He 
headed for Joan's bedroom, 

The doctor wasted a scant sec- 
ond staring at the empty bed; to 
him it seemed an endless time that 
had gone by. He pressed the inter- 
com button, and waited through 
another eternity till the Lab an- 
swered. 

Whatever had happened, what- 
ever mysterious force had removed 
Joan from her bed and left Polly 
unconscious in the street, this, he 
realized, must have been the ulti- 



72 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



mate agony for Joan — to lie in this 

bed, in dreadful haste, to press this 
button and wait and wait until it 
was too late ... 

"That you, Doc? What's up?" 
"Trouble. Get Jim Kandro out" 

here. To the Radcliffs! And get 
Anna. Send her to Kandros'. 
There's no one with the baby. Is 
Mimi there? Put her on." 

"Tony ? M The Lab Administra- 
tor's crisp voice was reassuring; he 
could leave part of the problem, at 
least, in her competent hands. 

"There's trouble here, Mim — 
don't know what, but Polly's faint- 
ed and Joan's disappeared." 

*T11 be right there. " She hung 
up. Tony retreated one step toward 

the living room, had an after- 
thought, and went back to the in- 
tercom. 

"Get Omtrella here, too," he 
told the Lab office. "Tell him to 
bring along the e.e.g. setup. Fast." 

Polly didn't look too bad. Mar- 
caine again? He'd know soon. 

V^hat was going on? 

Jim Kandro burst in, panting 
and terrified. His wide eyes went 
frorti his wife to the doctor, and a 
Single miserable word came from 
him. 

*Again? f 

T don't know. She fainted. 
Take her home, then look at 
Sunny. Anna's on her way over to 
help you." 

Jim Jeft with his burden in his 
arms, and Tony returned to the 
sick girl's bedroom. There was no 



i" 



«r 



trace, no clue, nothing he could 
find. He saw the wall canteen, up 
ended, and went toward it with 
excitement. A puddle of water on 
the floor. Incredible carelessness for 
Sun Lake, but it meant something. 
Joan hadn't been carried away; she 
h.id gone herself. She had stopped 
for water and left the canteen this 
way. 

A heartbroken shout from acros 
the street sent him running out of 
the house, over to the Kandros'. 

The living room was empty. 

In the bedroom, Polly lay alone 
Still UQCOnsdous. I ic found Kan- 
dro in the nc\v nursery, squatting 
on the floor beside the baby's 
empty crib, rocking in misery. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONlE 

"rpHEY ought to get the test 

X finished in a few minutes, 
but if you're ready, you might as 
well start now. It's a hundred to 
one chance against its being any- 
thing but cave dirt.*' Joe Gracey 
crumbled between skinny, sensitive 
fingers a bit of soil taken from the 
nursery floor. 

"As soon as we get the trans- 
ceiver," Mimi said. "Harve's bring- 
ing it over now/' 

Anna appeared in the doorway. 
"She's conscious now." 

Tony went back into the bed- 
room. "Polly?" 

Her eyelids fluttered open and 
closed. Her pulse was stronger, but 
she wasn't really ready to talk. 1 [e 



MARS CHILD 



73 






«4 



It 



had to try. Without a stimulant, if 
possible. 

"What happened, Polly?" he 
asked. 

"What's the use?" she said 
feebly. "What's the use? We tried 
and tried on Earth, and I just got 
sick, and we had Sunny here, and 
now they've taken him. It isn't any 
good." 

'Who's taken him, Polly?" 
'I went out to cleaa the win- 
dows. I cleaned the front window 
and then I went around to clean 
the back window. When I looked 
in Sunny was gone. That's all. They 
took him. They just took him.* 1 

"Who took him, Polly?" 

"I don't know. Brownies. We 
tried and tried on Earth — " 

THE doctor took Anna to one 
side. "She's too lucid," he 
whispered. "Do you 'hear' any- 
thing?" 

"Hardly anything." Anna shook 
her head. "She's numb. She's more 
conscious than she looks. Just 
numb. Doesn't care." 

"Shotlc," Tony muttered. "There 
will be a reaction. She shouldn't be 
left alone." 

"Ill stay," Anna offered. 

"No, not you. We'll need you 
along with us." 

'I'd rather not," she said. 
'Ansie," he pleaded, biting 
back his angry disappointment. 

"I shouldn't have told you," she 
said dully. "I should never have 
told anybody. All right, I'll go." 



74 



I » T t 



<* 



He smiled and gripped her arm. 
"Of course you will. You would 
have anyway." 

"No," she said. "I wouldn't." 

"Then maybe it's a good thing 
you told me." His voice was stern, 
but his hand pulled her closer to 
him. 

Polly twisted on the bed and 
sobbed. Anna pulled away. "May- 
be." She bit her lip, looked up at 
him. "Only please don't be angry 
at me. I can't stand it if you keep 
getting angry at me." She turned 
and fled. 

Tony went back to the bed, eras- 
ing Anna and her problems from 
his mind with practiced determina- 
tion. Polly was trembling uncon- 
trollably. There was no more in- 
formation to be had from her. He 
gave her a sedative and went out 
to join the others. 

Harve had arrived with the 

transceiver in his hand. On Anna's 

suggestion, a rush call was sent 

out for Hank Radcliff to stay with 

Polly. He didn't know about Joan; 

they decided not to tell him about 

it. 

"We need a man here with 

her," the doctor explained briefly. 
"The baby's disappeared, and 
we're going out now and try to 
track it. Polly might want to get 
up and follow. You keep her in 
bed." 

"Sure, Doc." 

"Nick Cantrella will be over 
with some equipment. Tell him to 

test Polly." 

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



THEY left the house, Mimi and 
Anna and the doctor, Jim Kan- 
dro, Harve Stillman, and Joe Gra- 
cey. 

"Look at that." Gracey was 
bending over in the road, pointing 
to the barely discernible mark of a 
bare toe. Here in the bottom of the 
old "canal" bed, where the settle- 
ment was built, the land retained 
a trace of moisture, enough to hold 
an impression for a while. 

Only part of a toe, but it pointed 
a direction. 

They headed up the street, past 
the huts toward the landing field. 

"Hey, Joe!" Someone was 
pounding up the hill after them, 
shouting. 

It was one of the men from the 
Agro Lab. 

"That test— it's from the hills, 
all right, most likely from inside a 
cave, but hill dirt. That all you 
wanted?" 

"Right. Thanks." 

"They told me you wanted the 
word fast," the man said curiously. 
"Glad I caught you." 

"Glad you did," Gracey agreed 
mildly. "Thanks again." He turned 
his back on the man. "Let's go." 

They topped the slight rise that 
marked the farthest extent of the 
old river bed's former inundations, 
and faced a featureless expanse of 
level desert land, broken only by 
Lazy Girl, chocked on the landing 
field at their left, and the hills in 
the distance. No other human be- 
ing was in sight. It was hopeless to 



look for footprints here, in the 
constantly shifting dust. 

"The hills?" Mimi said. 

Tony looked at Anna; she 
shrugged almost imperceptibly. 

"Might as well," he agreed. 

They moved forward, Kandro 
striding ahead with his great hands 
knotted into bony fists, his eyes set 
on the hills, unaware of the ground 
under his feet or of the people 
with him. It was Harve who found 
the print they had known was im- 
possible — not really a footprint, 
but a spot of moisture, fast evap- 
orating, still retaining a semblan< 
of the shape of a human foot. 

A little farther on there was an- 
other; they were going the right 
way. Tony stopped for a minute at 
one of the damp spots, poked a 
finger curiously into the ground. 
Grit and salt, as he had expected. 

She couldn't have lived throu. 
it. He didn't know how she got as 
far as she did, but even if her heart 
held out, she must have sweated her 
life away to have left those damp 
indicators in the thirsty soil. 

Only a little farther and the 
ground began to be littered with 
the refuse of the Rim-rock Hills — 
here and there a sliver of stone, a 
drift of mineral salts. Gradually, 
the dust gave way to sharp rock 
and hard-packed saltpans. And the 
footprints of sweat gave way to 
footprints of blood. 

Mimi drew in her breath be- 
tween her teeth at the thought of 
the sick girl stumbling barefoot 



MARS CHILD 



75 



over the slicing, razor-edged stones. 

"I see her/' Kandro whispered, 
still striding ahead. 

They raced a kilometer over the 
jagged rock and planed-off salt 
crust to the girl's body. She lay 
prone, with her right arm flung up 



He glanced at Anna and straight- 
ened up quickly. "What is it?" 

Her face was withdrawn and in- 
tense, her head held back like an 
animal scenting the wind. She 
scanned the broken waste, and 
pointed a hesitant finger. "Oui 




and pointing to the Rimrock Hills. 
Tony peeled back her eyelid and 
reached for the pulse. He turned 
to his bag, and Anna — blessed 
Anna — was already getting out the 
hypodermic syringe. 

"Adrenalin?" 

He nodded. Swiftly and efficient- 
ly, she prepared the hypo and hand- 
ed it to him. He bent over the girl 
busily, then sat back to wait. 



there — it S that way — moving a 
little." 

Kandro was on his way before 
she stopped speaking. 

Stillman shaded his eyes and 
peered. "A rock in the heat haze," 
he pronounced finally. "Nothing 
alive." 

i Tony saw Anna shake her 
head in a small involuntary dis- 
agreement. 



76 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



THEY stood and waited in a 
tense small circle until Jim 
reached the spot. He looked down 
and they saw him hesitate, then 
move on with the same determined 
stride. Gracey lit out after him. 
Mimi murmured approval. There 
was no telling what Kandro might 
do in his present mood. 

A barely audible noise from the 
-round, and Tony was on his knees 
heside Joan. Her eyes went wide 
open, shining with an inner glory 
that was unholy in the dirt-streaked, 
bloodstained dead white of her 
face. She smiled as a child might 
smile, with perfect inner compos- 
ure; she was pleased with herself. 

"Joan," the doctor said, "can 
you talk? 1 ' 

' "Yes, of course. ' ' But she 
couldn't. She only mouthed the 
words. 

"Does it hurt any place?" 

She shook her head, or started 
to, but when she had turned it to 
one side she lacked the strength to 
bring it back. "No." This time she 
forced a little air through to sound 
the word. 

She was dying and he knew it. 
If it were only the heart, he might 
have been "able to save her. But her 
body had been punished too much; 
it had given up. The water and 
the air that kept it alive were spent. 
Her body was a dead husk in 
which, for a moment, abetted by 
the little quantity of adrenalin, her 
heart and brain refused to die. 

He had to decide. They needed 

/ 

MARS CHILD 



if 



• • 



u 



what information she might have. 
She needed every bit of energy she 
had, to live out what minutes were 
left. The minutes didn't matter, he 
told himself. 

He knew, even as he made up 
his mind, that this, like the ghost 
baby, would haunt him all his life. 
If he were wrong, *if she had any 

chance to live, he was committing 
murder. But another life hung in 
the balance too. 

"Listen to me, Joan." He put 
his mouth close to her face. "Just 
say yes or no. Did you see some- 
body take the Kandros' baby?" 

"Yes." She smiled up at him 
beatifically. 

Do you know who it was?" 
Yes — no — I saw — " 
'Don't try to talk. You saw the 
kidnaper clearly?" 

"Yes." 

"Then it was someone you don't 
know?" 

"No- yes— " 
; 'Til ask it differently. Was it a 
stranger?" 

"Yes." She looked doubtful. 

"Anyone from the Colony ? M 

•Tfa." 

"A man?" 

"No— maybe." 
A woman?" 

'No." 

"Someone from Pittco?" 

She didn't answer. Her eyes 
were staring at her arm. The doc- 
tor had rolled her over, and the 
arm was at her side, stretched out. 
She let out a weird cry of fury and 



77 



H 



* t 



frustration. Tony watched and lis- 
tened, puzzled, till Anna bent over. 

"It's all right, Joan," she said 
softly. "You showed us. We saw 
the way it pointed. Jim is going 
that way now." 

The girl's eyes relaxed, and 
once again the dreadful light of 
joy shone from them. 

"Love me," she said distinctly. 
"I helped finally. Tony—" 

He bent over. She was trailing 
off again, less breath with each 
word. She might have minutes left, 

or seconds. 

"Nobody — believed — me or — 
them — it was — " 

She stopped, gasping, and the 

quiet smile of content gave way to 

a twisted grin of amusement. 

Brownie," she said, and said no 

more. 



u 



TONY closed her eyes and 
looked up to Anna's serene 
face. He saw that they were alone 
with the body of the dead girl. 

"Where—?" He got to his feet, 
carefully dulling sensation, refus- 
ing to feel anything. 

"Over there." She pointed to 
where two figures stooped over 
something on the ground. Farther 
off, Kandro's tall figure, still reso- 
lutely facing toward the hills, was 
being restrained by a smaller man 
— Joe Graccy? That meant it was 
Mimi and Harve close by. 
■ "They found something?" 



"Somebody," she corrected, and 
couldn't control a small shudder. 

Tony started forward. "You 
better stay with Joan," he said 
with difficulty, hating to admit any 
weakness in her. "I'll call you if — 
if we need you for anything." 

"Thank you." She was more 
honest about it than he could be. 
They saw him coming twenty 
meters off. 

"It's Graham," Mimi called. 
"The lying bastard steals babies 
too!" Harve spat out in disgust. 

"He looks bad," Mimi said 
cjuietly. "We didn't touch him. We 
were waiting for you." 

"Good." The doctor bent down 
and felt along the torso for broken 
bones. Carefully, he rolled the 
writer over. 

Graham's puffed eyes opened. 
Through broken lips with dried 
blood crusted on them he rapped 
jeeringly: "Come back to finish the 
job? God damned cowards. Sneak 
up on a man. God damned cow- 
ards!" 

"None ot our people did this to 
you," Tony said steadily. His 
hands ran over the writer's battered 
head and neck. The left clavicle 
was fractured, his nose was broken, 
his left eardrum had been ruptured 
by blows. 

"Let's get him back to the hos- 
pital," he said. "Harve, tell the 
radio shack to raise Marsport. Get 
Bell. Tell him we need that Blood- 
hound. Tell him I will not take no 
for an answer." 



78 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

IN AWKWARD silence the little 
procession walked along the 
Colony street, Kandro and Stillman 
together, carrying the writer, and 
Tony bearing the dead girl in his 
arms. The news had gotten around. 
Lab work seemed once again to 
have stopped completely. 

They escaped the heartsick stares 
of the colonists only when they 
entered Tony's hut-and-hospital. 
He deposited Joan there, on his 
own bed. It was still rumpled 'from 
Graham's brief occupancy the night 
before. They settled the writer on 
the hospital table. With Anna's 
help, he removed the torn and 
bloody clothing from Graham's 
body. 

"If you don't need us for any- 
thing, Tony, I think we better get 
going," Mimi said. "We ought to 
stop in and see Polly." 

"Sure. Go ahead — oh, wait a 
minute." Jim Kandro turned from 
his fixed spot in the doorway to 
listen. 

Tony beckoned to the blatkhaired 
Lab administrator to the other side 
of the room. 

"Mimi/' he said in an under- 
tone, "you ought to know that 
Polly has a gun. I'm not sure 
whether Jim knows it or not. You 
might want it if you're going out 
again. Anyhow, somebody ought to 
get it out of there." 

She nodded. "Where is it?" 

'UJsed to be in the baby's crib, 



but I think I talked her out of that. 
Don't know now." 

"Okay, I'll find it. I think we 
better* take it along. Oh — 111 send 
Hank back here." 

He was thoughtful. "Anna." She 
looked up. Her face was set and 
miserable. "Are you going out with 
the search party?" he asked, an 
innocent question to the others who 
listened, with a world of agonizing 
significance for Anna. 

"I — isn't Nick picking the peo- 
ple to go?" 

"I thought you might want to 
go. If you're sticking around, you* 
can handle Hank, can't you?" 

"Oh, yes," she said eagerly. "I'd 
be much more useful that way, 
wouldn't I?" 

He shrugged and tried to figure 
it out: she was perfectly willing to 
stay here in the hospital, to expose 
herself to Graham's physical, pain 
and Hank's inevitable agony. But 
she was afraid to go out after the 
baby. Why? 

Later, he decided, he could talk 
to her. He went briskly back to the 
table and began his examination 
of Graham. The writer was a mass 
of bruises from his chest up; he 
cursed feebly when the doctor felt 
for fractures. Tony set the collar 
bone and sh6t him full of sedation. 
"Your left eardrum is ruptured," 
he said coldly. "An operation can 
correct that on Earth." 

"You bust 'cm, somebody else 
fixes 'cm," Graham muttered. 

"Think what you want." He 



MARS CHILD 



79 



pushed the wheeled table over to 
the high bed Polly had occupied 

just a few days earlier. 

Graham groaned involuntarily as 
Tony shifted his shoulder. The doc- 
tor eased up. What for? he 
ormed at himself. Why should I 
e gent lv with the dirty sneak? He 

glanced hastily at Anna and caught 
;he half-smile on her face as she 
pulled the covers over the writer. 

"Tin going in the other room, 
Graham/' Tony said. "You can call 
me if you need me." 

"Sure," Graham told him. 'Til 
call you soon as I feel ready for 
another beating. I love it." 

TONY didn't answer. In the 
other room, he sat down and 

faced Anna intently. "Do you 
know whether any of our people 
could have done that to him?" 
"They aren'r haters," she said 

slowly. "If they were, they would- 
n't be here. Someone might fly into 
a rage and break his jaw, but me- 
thodical punishment like that — 

no." 

"I'll tell you what it reminds me 

of. Big Ginny." 
"She was killed." 
"She was beaten up, though that 

wasn't what killed her." 

"(Does it have anything to do 
with Pittco?" Anna asked. "Why 
should they beat Graham? Why 
should they have beaten that wo- 

"I don't know." He managed a 
feeble grin. "You know that." 



He lowered his voice. "Can you 
'hear' him?" 

"He's in a Jot of pain. Shock's 

worn off. And he hates us. God, he 
hates us. I'm glad he hasn't got a 

gun." 

"He's got a by-line. That's just 
as good." 

"Evidently that just occurred to 
him. Can he hear us in there? He's 
gloating now. It must be a fantasy 
about what he's going to do to us." 
. "Hell, we're through anyway. 
What difference does it make? All 
I want now is to find Sunny and 
get off this damned planet and 
give up trying. I'm sick of it." 

"You're not even kidding your- 
self," she said gently. "How do 
you think you can fool me?" 

"All right," he said. "So you 
think my heart is breaking because 
Sun Lake's washed up. What good 
is it going to do me? Anna, will I 
be seeing you back on Earth? I 
want us. to stay teamed up. When 
I go into practice — M 

The woman winced and stood 
up. She closed the door to the hos- 
pital, "He was listening," she said. 

"He let out a blast of derision that 
rattled my skull when he heard you 
talk about going into practice on 
Earth." 

Tony pulled her down beside 
him, and held her quietly against 
his chest. "Ansie," he said once, 
softly, "my poor sweet Ansie." He 
kissed her hair, and they sat very 
still until Hank knocked on the 
door. 



80 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



11 



H 



>.IW. 



AN>K stared at his wife's body, 
refusing to believe what he 



"She didn't feel much/' Tony 
tried to explain. "Just a bad mo- 
ment, maybe, when her heart gave 
out. She couldn't have felt any- 
thing, or she'd never have gotten 
so far." 

"Wc were there at the end," 
Anna reminded the young man. 
"She was — she was very happy. 
She wanted to be useful more than 
anything else in the world. You 
know that, don't you? And in the 
end she was. She loved you very 
much, too. She didn't want you to 
be unhappy." 

"What did she say?" Hank 
wouldn't tear his eyes from the 
bed. He stood and stared ceaseless- 
ly, as if another moment of look- 
ing would show him some fallacy, 
some error, 

"Did she really say that, about 
loving me?" 

"She said — " Anna hesitated, 
then went on firmly. "She said, 
'Tell Hank I want him to be happy 
all the time/ I heard her," she an- 
swered Tony's look of surprise. It 
wasn't much of a lie. 

"Thank you. I — M He sat on the 
bed beside his wife, his hand caress- 
ing the face stained with blood 
and dust. 

Tony turned and left the room. 
In the hospital, Graham was asleep 
or unconscious again. Tony went 



back to his own chair in the living 
room. 

There were so many hints, so 
many leads, so many parts of the 
picture. Somehow it all went to- 
gether. He tried to concentrate, but 
his thoughts kept wandering, into 
the hospital where the writer lay 
beaten as Big Ginny had been 
beaten; into the bedroom, where 
Joan lay dead of — of Mars; where 
Anna was comforting the young 
man who would never realize, if he 
was lucky, that he had killed Joan 
himself as surely as if he had 
throttled her. 

The last thing she said before 
she died! Tony snorted. The last 
thing she said, with that glorious 
light in her eyes, and a grin of de- 
light on her face was "Brownie!" 

And there it was! 

Within a few seconds' time 
everything raced through lis mind, 
all the clues, the things that fitted 
together — Big Ginny, and Gra- 
ham's story, Sunny and the mask 
and Joans dying words. Every- 
thing ! 

He jumped up in furious excite- 
ment. 

No, not everything, he realized. 
Not the rnarcaine. That didn't fit. 

He paced the length of the room, 
and turned to find Anna standing 
in the bedroom door. 

"Did you call?" she asked. 

"What happened?" 

He smiled. He went over and 

pushed the door closed behind her 

"Ansie/ 1 he said, "you just don't 



MARS CHILD 



81 



know how lucky you are to have a 
big, strong, intelligent man like me. 
When are we going to get mar- 
ried?" 

She shook her head. 

"Not until you tell me what it's 
all about." 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 

REFUSE ENTERTAIN RE- 
QUEST THIS DATE. POLICE 
POWERS THIS OFFICE EX- 
TEND ONLY TO INTERCOL- 
ONY MATTERS. PAC DOES 
NOT REPEAT NOT AU- 
THORIZE USE OF POLICE 
EQUIPMENT FOR INTRA- 
COLONY AFFAIRS. 

HAMILTON BELL 
PLANETARY AFFAIRS 

COMMISSIONER 

TONY read through the formal 
message sheet, then the note 
attached to it: 

"That's the master's voice up 
there. The PAC radio up in Mars- 
port told me, on the side, that the 
old man doesn't believe a word of 
you* story. If the baby really is 
missing, he figures 'that Markie 
Mama did it in.' Graham really 
fixed us. I hope you're taking good 
care of him. If you get him back 
in shape, I won't feel so bad about 
taking a crack at him myself. 
Harve." 

The doctor smiled briefly, then 
asked Tad Campbell, who was 
waiting to take his answer back to 



the radio shack: 
than see this?" 

"No. It just 
wants to know 
send." 



'Did Mimi Jona- 
eame in. Harve 

what answer to 



CANTTOELLA and Gracey were 
out with the search party too, 
Tony realized. That left the deci- 
sion squarely up to him. 

He scribbled a note: "Harve, try 
this one on the commish. RE- 
QUEST USE PAC FACILITIES 
TO TRACK VICIOUS ATTACK- 
ER OF OUR GUEST, DOUGLAS 
GRAHAM. That ought to get us 
every tin soldier on the planet, and 
old man Bell himself heading the 
parade. Graham as victim gives him 
an out, too; he can call it intercol- 
ony. Get hot. We need that Blood- 
hound. Tony." 

When the boy was gone, Tony 
paced nervously around the living 
room, started to heat water for 
"coffee," and decided he didn't 
want it. 

There was an almost empty 
bottle of liquor on the floor near 
the table — Graham's. The doctor 
reached for it and drew back. It 
wasn't the right time or the right 

bottle. 

He headed for the bedroom door, 
and remembered that Joan's body 
was still occupying the bed. He 
peered into the hospital; Graham 
was still sleeping. Nothing to do 
but sit and wait, and think it out 
all over again. It checked every 
time — but it couldn't be right. 



82 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



He hadn't told Anna yet. When 
you came right down to it, the 
whole thing was too far-fetched; 
he wouldn't believe it himself, if 
somebody else had proposed it. 

But it checked all the way every 
time. 

He got up again and hunted 
through his meager stack of onion- 
skin volumes and scientific jour- 
nals. Nothing there, but Joe Gra- 
cey ought to know. When the 
search party came back . . . ■ 

Maybe they'd find the baby and 
the kidnaper; maybe he never 
woujd tell — or have to tell — any- 
body his crackpot theory. He de- 
cided to make the * 'coffee" after 
all, and wished he hadn't sent 
Anna and Hank back to stay with 
Polly, but Gladys had been frantic 
and frightened when she buzzed 
him. He couldn't expect the child 
to handle a hysterical woman by 
herself. 

The doctor poured his 'coffee" 
and drank it slowly, not letting 
himself go to the intercom. Polly 
and Hank could help each other 
now; it worked that way. And 
Anna was better for them than he 
would be himself. Somebody had 
to stay with Graham. He got up 
and paced restlessly into the hos- 
pital room again. The writer stirred 
and moaned as the door opened, 
but that was all. 

It was more than an hour since 
Tad had left. Why no reply from 
Harve? 

Tony went to the front door, 



opened it and peered up the street, 
out over the housetops to the land- 
ing field. Nothing in sight. He 
turned to go back in, and out of 
the corner of his eye saw them 
rounding the curve of the street. 

Gracey, Mimi, Juarez, and then 
Kandro, taking each step reluctant- 
ly, his heart back in the hills, while 
Nick Cantrella and Sam Flexner, 
one on each side, urged him for- 
ward. Tony's heart sank; there was 
no mistaking defeat. 



11 



«TPM sure," Mimi said steadily, 
X "we heard him cry. Just for 
a minute. Then it was as if some- 
one had clapped a hand over his 
mouth. Tony, we can't wait. We've 
got to get him out right away." 
"What about the other caves ?" 
"We tried them all around/' 
Gracey said. "Five or six on each 
side and a couple up above. But 
every one of those fissures narrows 

down inside the hill the same way. 
We couldn't get through. I don't 
sec how the kidnapers did, either/' 

"How about the other side?" 
Tony asked. "Someone could go 
around with a half-track and take 
a look." 

"We thought of it," Mimi said 
sharply. "Nick got Pittco on the 
transceiver. Mister Hackenburg was 
so sorry. Mister Reynolds was away, 
and he didn't have the authority 
himself to permit us to search on 
their ground. He was so sorry!" 



MARS CHILD 



83 



SHE stood up abruptly, and 
turned to the wall, not quite 
quickly enough. Tony saw her 
brush at her eyes before she turned 
back and said throatily: "Well, 
little men, what now? Where do 
we go from here?" 

"We wait," Joe Gracey said 
helplessly. "We wait for Bell to 
answer us. We wait for Reynolds 
to get back. What else can we do?" 

"Nothing, I guess. We left half 
a dozen men out there," Mimi told 
the doctor. "They're watching, and 
they have the transceiver. I guess 
Joe's right. We wait." 

Silence, and Tony tried to find 
a way to say what he had to say. 
They couldn't just wait, not while 
he knew something to try. The 
baby might be all right, but maybe 
they would get there just one min- 
ute too late. 

He turned to Gracey. 

"Joe, what do you know about 
lethal genes?" 

"Huh?" The agronomist looked 
up, dazed, shook his head, and re- 
peated without surprise at the 
irrelevent question, "Lethal genes?" 
He stopped and considered, men- 
tally tabulating his information. 
"Well, they're recessives that — " 

"No, I know what they are," 
Tony stopped him. "I thought I 
heard you say something about 
them the other day. Didn't you 
say you thought you'd hit on some 
that were visible on Mars?" 

Anna drifted in, with Hank at 
her heels, and they went straight 



through, into the room beyond 
where Joan still lay. . 

"Oh, yes," Gracey said. "Very 
interesting stuff. Come out to the 
Lab when you have the time, and 
Til show you. We—" 

Mimi jumped up. "What are 
you gabbling about?" she demand- 
ed. "This is an emergency! We 
have to find some way to rescue 
that baby!" 

'Tm sorry, Mimi." Gracey was 
bewildered. "What's wrong any- 
way? Tony asked a perfectly inno- 
cent question, and I answered him 
when we'd all agreed that we had 
nothing to do but sit around and 
wait. Why not use the time?" 

Abruptly, Tony made up his 
mind. It was up to him now. And 
to Anna. He got up and called her 
from the bedroom, led her outside, 
into the street in front of the 
house, where they were out of ear- 
shot of all the others. 

"Well?" She smiled up at him, 
"Will you stop feeling sorry for 
me and tell me what you're sorry 
about?" 

"In a minute. Anna, last night 
when we took the mask off Sunny 
— when you fainted — how did it 
feel?" 

I told you." 

Yes, you said it was very 
strong, stronger than you thought 
a baby could — feel. But was it just 
stronger or was there something 
different ?" 

"That's hard to say. I was — 
well, I was all worn out and upset. 



« < 



• - 



84 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



It might have been different, but I 
don't know how. I'm not even sure 
it was." 

She looked up at him sharply. 
"Why?" 

"It checks," he said to himself. 

'Listen, Ansie, there's a job to 1 

done. A tough job. A job nobody 

m do but you. It may — hurt you. I 

don't know. I don't even know if 

ii will work. It's a crazy theory 
I've got, so crazy I don't even want 
to explain it to you. But if I'm 
tght, you're the only person who 
I m do it." He stopped. "Anna, did 
you hear what Joan's last word 
really was? She said, 'Brownie.' 

He looked down into frightened 
dark eyes. 

"Tony, there aren't any Brown- 
ie, are there?" 

"You mean do I believe there 

arc? No, I don't. But I do think 

there's something." 

"You want me to go out there 
and listen ?" 

"Yes. But that's only part of k. 
I wouldn't let you go alone; if you 
do go, I'll be with you — if that 
helps any. But I want to go into 
tl. we where they heard the baby 
and sec what we can find." 

"No!" The cry was torn from 
her. "I didn't mean that," she 
caught herself. "It's just — oh, 
Tony, I'm afraid" 

"We've got to iind out. Ansie, 
we've got lo find out." 

"The Bloodhound?" she asked 
d erately. "Can't you track them 
with the Bloodhound?" 



"Bell hasn't answered us. How 
long can we wait?" 

She stood silent for a ariomen?. 
then turned her face up to hi 
serenely quiet now and trusting. 

"All right," she said at last 
"All right, Tony, if you say it has 
to be done." 

"Fill be there with you/' he 
promised. 



* * ■ 

UJ 



MIMI and Joe didn't under- 
stand, and Tony didn't try to 
explain. He simply repeated thai 
he had an "idea;" he wanted to go 
out, with Anna, to the cave whe 
the baby's cry had been heard. 
He left careful instructions about 

the care of Graham if he should 

awake, and about Hank, Polly, and 
Jim, all three of whom were too 
upset to be left to themselves. 

A ten -minute ride on the half- 
track and they were within the 
shadow of the Rimrocks. The drift- 
ing stench of Pittco's refineries on 
the other side began to reach them; 
then the ground was too rocky to 
go on. Tony stopped the machine 
and they got out. Farther up the 
face of the nearest hill, they could 
make out the figures of the fh 
who had remained on guard. 

One of them came running — 
Flcxner, the chemist. "They said 
on the transceiver you were com 
ing," he told Anna and Tony. 
"What's your idea? We're goin 
nuts sitting around waiting. Ted 



MARS CHILD 



85 



thought he heard Sunny cry again 
but nobody else did." 

"I just wanted to see if I could 
turn up anything," Tony told him 
"We're going into the cave." 

TOGETHER they walked out of 
the sunlight into the seven 
foot opening in the hard rock. One 
of the guards would have preced- 
ed them, but Anna firmly refused. 
A chalk mark along the wall, 
drawn by the others when they left 
the cave, was guide enough. 

They followed the white line in 
and down some fifty meters, then 
fifty more along a narrowing left- 
hand branch, and then a hundred 
meters, left again and narrowing, 
to another fork. Both the branches 
were too small for an adult to 
squeeze through. The chalk line 
pointed into the right-hand cranny. 

That was as far as they could 
go. They stood at the narrow open- 
ing, listening. 

There was nothing to hear, no 
sound at all in the rock-walled still- 
ness except their own breathing 
and the tiny rustling of their hands 
along rough alien stone. 

They waited, Tony's eyes fixed 
on Anna's face. He tried to silence 
his thoughts as he could his voice, 
but doubts tore at him. He turned, 
finally, to the one certainty he 
knew, and concentrated on Anna 
and her alone: on his love for her, 
her love for him. 

"I hear something," she whis- 
pered at last. "Fear — mostly fear, 



but eagerness, too. They are not 
afraid of us. I think they like us. 
They're afraid of — it's not clear — 
of people?" 

She fell silent again, listening. 

"People." She nodded her head 
emphatically. "They want to talk 
to us, Tony, but — I don't know." 
Her brow furrowed in concentra- 
tion and she sat down suddenly on 
the hard rock floor, as though the 
physical exertion of standing were 
more than she could bear. 

"Tony, go and tell the guards 
to go away," she said at last. 

"No," he said firmly. 

"Go ahead. Please. Hurry. They 
are trying — " Abruptly, she 
stopped concentrating on the dis- 
tance. "You spoiled it," she said 
bitterly. "You frightened them." 

How?" 

'You didn't trust them. You 
thought they'd hurt me." 

"Ansie, how can we trust them? 
How can I leave you here alone 
and send the guards away? Don't 
you see I can't take that risk?" 

"You made me come here," she 
said tiredly. "You said I was the 
one who could do the job. I'm try- 
ing to do it. Please go now and 
tell the guards to leave. Tell them 
to get out of range — down at the 
bottom of the hill, maybe as far 
away as the half-track. Please, 
Tony, do as I say." 

"All right." But he was still 
hesitant. "Anna, who arc they?" 

"I — *' The bitterness left her 
face. "Brownies," she said. 



* » 



• t ■ 



S6 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



"But that's not — I'm sorry. I 

didn't mean to feel angry and frus- 
trated. What docs the word mean v 

"They're different." 

"Like Sunny?" 

"Not exactly." She made a small 

useless gesture with her hands. 
"More — distinct. No, maybe you're 
right. I think they're like him, only 
older." 

"How many are there?" 

"Quite a few. Too many iov n 
to count. One of them is doing all 

tiie — talking." 

"Talking?" Yes, that was part of 
what had bothered him. "Ansie, 
how can you understand so clearly? 
You told me you can't do that 
You didn't know what Graham was 
angry about. How do you know 
what they're afraid of?" 

"Tony, I don't know. I can un- 
derstand, that's all, and I'm sure 
it's right, and I know they're not 
tricking us. Now please, please go 
nid tell the guards." 
1 He went. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOLK 

<<TT'EEP him away from me!" 

X\- Graham screamed. 

Mimi raced through Tony's liv- 
ing room into the hospital half of 

the hut. 

It was Hank, standing rigidly 
Still, glaring at the writer. "You 

don't understand about Mars," 
Hank was saying in a hard mono- 
tone. "You never saw the Rimrocks 
when there was just enough light 



to tell them from the sky, or walked 
a hundred miles in the desert 
watching the colors change every 
minute/' 

"Mrs. Johnson, get him out of 
here. He's crazy." 

Mimi took Hank by the arm. 
"I'm not crazy," he said. "Those 
boomers at .Pittco, this writer here, 
Bell and his soldiers, Brenner and 
his factory, they're crazy. They're 
trying to cheapen Mars." 

Hysteria, thought Mimi. She'd 
coped with enough cases of it when 
she'd bossed girls at desks, as far 
as the eye could see, on the 76th 
floor of the American Insurance 
Groups Building. 

"Raddiff!" she said. 

There was a savage whip-crack in 
her voice. 

He turned to her, startled. "I 
wasn't going to hurt him," he said 
confusedly. 

Get him to cry. Break him. Un- 
til then, there's no knowing what 
will happen. "Your poor wife's ly- 
ing in there," she said with meas- 
ured nastiness, "and you find time 
to brawl with a sick man." 

"I didn't mean anything like 
that," he protested. 

Still unbroken. "Get into the 
bedroom," she said. "Sit there. 
That's the least you can do." 

He walked heavily into the room 
where his wife's body lay and she- 
heard him drop into a plastic chain 

"Thanks, Mrs. Johnson/' said 
Graham painfully. "He was Spoil- 
ing for a fight." 



MARS CHILD 



87 



"Mrs. Jonathan/' she corrected. 
And I don't want your thanks." 

She turned and rattled through 
drawers of medications, hoping 
she'd find something she could give 
I lank. She didn't know what to use 
or how much. She slapped the 
drawer shut and was angry with 
Tony and Anna for not being there 
when she needed them. 

She stalked into the bedroom 
and stared at Hank without show- 
ing any pity. He was looking dully 

at the wall, a spot over the bed on 
which Joan's broken body lay. No 
shakes; no tears, unbroken still. 
But she couldn't bring herself to 

lash him further and precipitate 

the emotional crisis. 

■ 

She went back into Tony's liv- 
ing room and threw herself into a 
chair. She'd hear if anything hap- 
pened. Mrs. J., the (error of audit- 
ing, Old Eagle-eye, and a few less 

complimentary things when the 
girls were talking between the 
booths in one of the 76th-floor 
johns. Efficiency bonuses year alter 
year, even bad years, and that meant 
you were an old witch. She must 
be out of practice, or getting soft, 
she decided harshly, if she couldn't 
handle an absurdly simple little 
thing like this. 

We ought to have Tony trmn 
j omebody besides Anna, she 
t hought. There' s Hitrve, but he 

only knows radio-health, And then 
she remembered that it didn't mat- 
ter; Sun Lake wouldn't last that 
long. 



SHE heard a plane coming in at 
the landing field and won- 
dered whose. Hank stirred in the 
bedroom and she tensed, but then 
.she heard the creak of his big body 
slumping back into the chair. He 
wouldn't break. He had too much 
of the old Marsman in him, the 
tough old breed, tin the old days, 
if she'd been assigning a pair of 

girls to an audit program, she 
wouldn't have made a match like 
Hank and Joan — one starry-eyed 
and on fixe for an ideal; the other 
solidly and physically in love with 
lar places for their fatness and mys- 
tery. But it had worked here and 
they'd had their measure of happi- 
ness before they had -to taste their 
measure of hell. 

Hank should have come earlk 
He should have been one of. the 
first, eating out of cans, mapping 
and mining, bearded to his waist, 

inarticulate, but sure about what 
he wanted, loan should have come 
later. She should have been an 
immigrant after the colony had 
licked Mars medicine, while there 
still was grinding work and sacri- 
fice enough to please the most im- 
passioned, but not so much that a 
i rail body would crumple under it. 

But there wasn't going to be 
any "later," of course. It was hard 
to get used to that realization. 

She got up and had a drink of 
water from the wall canteen, and 
then, defiantly, another, because it 
didn't matter now. She felt like 
taking on the world for Sun Lake. 



88 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



Joan must have felt like that. Their 
water supply was scanty, but it was 
water — not the polluted fluid of 
Earth, chlorinated to the last pota- 
ble degree. 

THE intercom in the bedroom 
-buzzed. She walked in and 
picked it up, glanced at Hank, still 
numbly staring. 

"Hello, Mimi." It was Harve. 
"Answer from Bell. Quote: 'RE 
ASSAULT ON DOUGLAS GRA- 
HAM I AND DETAIL OF 
GUARDS WILL TAKE ACTION 
THIS MATTER. REQUEST USE 
PAC FACILITIES DENIED. 
HAMILTON BELL' ct cetera. 
What do you figure he'll do — try 
and pin the Graham slugging on 
us too?" 

"I don't know," she said. "It 
doesn't matter. What plane was 
that?" 

"Brenner's. Snooty bastard didn't 
even check in with us. Just sat right 
down on the iield. : 

"He might as well. He'll own it 
soon enough." 

She heard Harve clear his throat 
embarrassedly. "Well, I guess 
that's all." 

"Goodby," she agreed, hanging 
up. She shouldn't have said that; 
she was supposed to pretend that 
while there was life there was hope. 

"Hank?" she asked gently and 

inquiringly. 

He looked up. "I'm all right, 

thanks." 

He wasn't, but there was noth- 



ing she could do. She looked 

through the door to the hospital. 
Graham seemed to be dozing. She 
sat down in the living room again. 

Brenner came in without knock- 
ing. "They told me you were here, 
Mrs. Jonathan. I wonder if we 
could go to your office in the Lab. 
I want to talk business." 

"I'm staying here," she said 
shortly. "If you want to talk here, 
I'll listen." 

Brenner shrugged and sat down. 
"Do we have privacy?" 

"There's a boy in the next room 
going crazy with grief over his 
dead wife — and over the prospect 
of leaving Mars. And there's a bad- 
ly beaten man sleeping in the hos- 
pital quarters." 

The drug manufacturer lowered 
his voice. "Relative privacy," he 
said. "Mrs. Jonathan, you have the 
only business head in the Colony." 
He opened his briefcase on the 
tabic and edged the corner of a 
sheaf of bills from one of' its 
pockets. The top one was a thou- 
sand dollars. He didn't look at it, 
but riffled the sheaf with his thumb, 
slowly, like a gambler manipulating 
a deck of cards. They were all 
thousands, and there were over one 
hundred of them. 

"It's going to be very hard on 
some of the colonists, I'm afraid," 
he said conversationally. 

"You have no idea." 

"It needn't be that hard on all 
of them." His thumb flipped the 
big bills. "Your colony is facing 



MARS CHILD 



89 



an impossible situation, Mrs. Jona- 
than. Let's not mince "words; it's a 
matter of bankruptcy and forced 
sale, I'm in a position to offer you 
a chance to retr©# in good order, 
with some money in your pockets." 

"That's very kind of you, Mr. 
Brenner. I'm not sure I under- 
stand." 

"Please/' he smiled, 'let's not 
be coy. I'm being perfectly candid 
with you. If it comes to a forced 
sale, I intend to bid as high as 
necessary; I need this property. But 
I'm not a man who believes in 
leaving things to chance. "Why 
shouldn't you sell out to me now? 
Jt would save yourselves the hu- 
miliation of bankruptcy, and I be- 
lieve everyone concerned would 
benefit financially." 

"You realize I'm not in a posi- 
tion to close any deals, Mr. Bren- 
ner?" she asked. 

"Yes, of course. You have a 
council in charge here, don't you? 
And you're a member. You could 
plead my case with them." 

"I suppose I could." 

"All right." He smiled again, 
and his thumb continued to riffle 
the pile of bills. "Then I have to 
plead it first with you. Why should 
you stay on Mars? In the hope that 
'something* will turn up? Believe 
me, It will not. Your commercial 
standing will be gone. Nobody 
would dream of extending credit 
to the people who were six months 
behind on their deliveries. Nothing 
will turn up, Mrs. Jonathan." 



/ 



90 



"What if the stolen marcaine 

turns up?" 

"Then, of course — " He smiled 
and shrugged. 

MIMI read a momentary alarm 
in his face. For the first time 
since the crisis she entertained the 
thought that it was not a frameup. 

She pressed harder. "What if 
we're just waiting to hand Bell the 
hundred kilos and the thief?" 

Brenner turned inscrutable again. 
"Then something else will happen. 
And if the Colony survives that, 
something else again." He quickly 
denied the implication of sabotage 
by adding: "You have a funda- 
mentally untenable financial situa- 
tion here. Insufficient reserves, 
foggy motives — what businessman 
can trust you when he knows that 
your Lab production workers might 
walk out one fine day and stay out ? 
They aren't bound by salaries but 
by idealism." 

"It's kept us going." 

''Until now. Come, Mrs. Jona- 
than, I said I wanted an advocate 
in the Council." He thumbed out 
the deck of bills all the way from 
the pocket in the opened brief- 
case. "You have a business head. 
You know that if you do produce 
my marcaine and the thief, Mr. 
Graham's little story — which I read 
with great interest — will be an- 
other bad hump to get over. There 
will be more." 

He meant two things: more 
humps, and more sheafs of thou- 

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



sand dollar bills for her if she took 
the bribe. 

Mimi smiled without moving a 
muscle of her face. It had been a 
long time since she had talked this 
kind of talk, but she still knew 
how. The smile stayed inside her 
head; her face displayed only the 
most casual interest. 

"Are you offering to buy the 
Colony, Mr. Brenner? Would you 
care to name a price?" 

"What are you asking?" he coun- 
tered. 

Oh, no, she thought, you're not 
getting away with that. 

"All right, we'll play it your 
way," she said. "Name two prices. 
You want to buy my services, too, 
don't you?" 

"Whatever gives you that no- 
tion? I'm not trying to bribe you, 
Mrs. Jonathan." He picked up the 
sheaf of bills and placed them in 
front of her. "There's a hundred 
thousand here. I can bring another 
— say another four hundred thou- 
sand — [or a dawn payment, when- 
ever you say. My price for the Col- 
only," he added distinctly, "is ex- 
actly five million/' 

"Plus your down payment?** she 
asked, amused. 

"That's right." 

"That would just about pay all 
our fares back to Earth. We'll 
smash the Lab to bits before we 
let you get it for any such price." 

"You'll rot in prison if you do/' 
Brenner said easily. "There is an 
injunction on file at Marsport 



signed by Commissioner Bell re 
straining you from any such fool- 
ishness. An act of contempt would 
mean imprisonment for all of you. 
I mean mh" 

"No such paper has been served 
on us." 

"The Commissioner assured me 
it had been served. I don't doubt 
his word. Not many people, in- 
( hiding appeals judges, would 
doubt his word either." 

MIMI didn't dare answer this 
display of force. She set her 
teeth and thought about five mil- 
lion — and five hundred thousand. 
Passage home, the respectability of 
having sold instead of going bank- 
rupt, maybe the chance of another 
charter and another try — 

"It'll have to be put into form 
by the Council and vote* I on by 
the entire Colony," she said pain- 
fully. "You wanted an advance. 
Take your money back; I'm not for 
sale. But I will plead your case if 
you'll make it ten million. God 

knows, it's a bargain. There's abso- 
lutely no depreciation on the Lab 
to be figured. It's better now than 
it ever was. Maintenance has al- 
ways been top-level. Better than 
anything you'll ever be able to find 
in industry/' 

"Five million and five hundred 
thousand was my offer. I'm not the 
Croesus uninformed people taktrme 
for. I have my expenses on the 
marcaine distribution end, you 
know/* 



MARS CHILD 



91 



a 



rNY sweated out the time. 
Eight minutes creeping 
along the chalk line in the dark — 
he'd left the light with Anna. Five 
minutes scrabbling over the boul- 
ders at the cave opening on the 
face of the Hill. Twelve long min- 
utes talking the guards into leaving, 
and a painful tortured eternity — 
maybe another twelve minutes re- 
entering the cave and tracing the 
chalk line by the dim light bor- 
rowed from Ted. 

Tony was sweating ice by the 
time the radiance from Anna's light 
came in view. He rounded the last 
curve in the winding passage, and 
something jumped up from the 
floor, straightened and stood, tense 
and watchful as the doctor. 

Anna, seated on the cold floor, 
laughed softly, melodiously. 

She was all right. Tony relaxed 
a little and instantly felt — some- 
thing, a gentle stroking, a tentative 
touch, not on his head but in it. 
No menace, no danger. Friendship. 

The doctor stared across the cav- 
ern: leathery brown skin, barrel 
chest, big ears, skinny arms and 
legs; the height of a small man or 
a large boy; and — a telepath. 

The friendly touch on his mind 
persisted through his quick distaste, 
his exultation, his eagerness. 

"Anna," very softly, "is it all 
right to talk?" 

"Not too loud. His ears are 

sensitive. 



*» 



"Who is he? Are there more? 
Does he have Sunny? Ask him 
that, Anna — ask him !" 

"A Brownie." she laughed again, 
joyously. "You told me that. There 
are four more down there, inside, 
with Sunny." 

"Is he all right?" 

"Yes. They took him to help 
him, not to do any harm. He need- 
ed something, but I can't find out 
what." 

The Brownie squatted again on 
the floor beside Anna. Tony ap- 
proached slowly and sat down next 
to them. 

He felt goose-flesh and mem- 
ories of old nursery book horrors, 
but nothing happened. He forced 
himself to ask Anna: "What kind 
of thing?" 

"Something to eat, I think. 
Something like the first sip of water 
when you're thirsty, and as neces- 
sary as salt, and — good. Maybe 
like a vitamin, but it tastes won- 
derful." 

Tony ran through a mental cata- 

, logue of biochemicals. But that was 

foolish; how could you tell what 

would taste good to anything as 

alien as a Brownie? 

"Have you tried sign language?" 
he asked Anna. 

"Where do you start?" she 
shrugged. "You'd have to build up 
a whole set of symbols before you 
could get anything across . . . Tony, 
I'm sure we can get the baby back 
if we just understand what it is he 

needs." 



92 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 




MARS CHILD 



93 



THE doctor reached over, hesi- 
tated, and forced himself to 
tap the Brownie lightly on the 
shoulder. When he had the crea- 
ture's attention, he whispered to 
Anna: "Tell him we're trying to 
iind out what it is." He pointed to 
his own eyes. "Show us," he said 
to the creature, and tried to project 
the thought, the image of seeing, 
as hard as he could. 

They kept repeating it with every 
possible combination of thought 
and act. Then, suddenly, the 
Brownie jumped and dashed off, 
down the tunnel. 

"Did he get the idea?" demand- 
ed Tony. "Is he coming back?" 

"It's all right," smiled Anna. 
"He understood." 

Silence in the eerie place was 
almost unbearable. 

"Don't worry so, Tony," Anna 
said. "If you want to know, he al- 
most scared the wits out of me, too. 
I was; sitting, trying to look dow 
the little opening, and still — talk- 
ing — to the ones down there, and 
he came up behind me. I was con- 
centrating on them so I didn't hear 
him, either way." 

Tony sat back thoughtfully. It 
was all true then; his crazy theory 
was righ t — there were act u al 1 y 
Brownies on Mars, a form of life 
so highly developed that it was 
telepathic, and with no lower life 
forms to have evolved from. He 
wondered if he had hit the right 
explanation, too, but there was no 
other explanation. 



The brownie was back, carrying 
sonic tlung, a box. Large letters in 
black on the side read: 

DANGER 

SEALED MARCAINE 

CONTAINER 

Do Not Open Without 

A.tithorJzdl'ion 

JBrenner Pharmaceutical Co. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 

TONY helped Anna dismount 
from the half-track, with her 
valuable burden in her arms. She 
jounced Sunny happily, and cooed 

down at the pink face. The doctor 

didn't jounce his own burden; he 
lifted it down even more carefully 
than he had helped Anna. The mar- 
caine box was tightly wrapped in 
his shirt and hers. They were count- 
ing on the several layers of cloth 
to trap escaping dust and protect 
them from marcaine jags, but the 
doctor still wasn't taking any 
chances on stirring up the contents 
of the half-full box. 

They cut across the bare land in 
back of the row of houses, heading 
toward the curved street near the 
Kandros*. 

"Tony," Anna asked anxiously 
again, f 'how are we possibly going 
to explain it?" 

,r I told you I don't know." He 
was only a little irritable. They had 
the baby; they had the marcaine. 
"We'll have to talk to Mimi and 
Joe and Nick, and probably the 



94 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



others too. We'll sec how it 
goes . . ." 

"No, 1 don't mean that," she 
stopped him. "I mean to Polly. 
And Jim. Jim isn't going to like 
it unless he hears the whole story, 
and I don't know if we ought 
to . . ." 

"Like it or not," Tony said 
briskly, "Kandro'U do what T tell 
him to. We'll have to tell them it's 
marcaine; I don't dare risk mis- 
labeling the stuff. You'll have to 
blow some ampoules for it, I guess, 
and I'll figure out some way of 
wetting it down and getting it into 
them. But you're right," he added, 
"if you mean we shouldn't say any 
more than we have to just now." 

They stepped onto the packed 
dirt of the street and cut across to 

the Kandros'. 

Joe Gracey was sitting alone in 
the living room. 

"Praise God," he said quietly, 
and called: "Polly! Jim/" The 
couple appeared, red-eyed, at the 
nursery door, saw their baby, and 
flew to him. 

"You gave him to us again. 
Doc!" said Jim. "l&uks." 

Polly was more practical: "Has 
he eaten? Is he well? He looks all 
right, but — " 

"You can feed him in a minute. 
Now listen carefully. This young 
man of yours, you know, is special 
in some ways. He can take the 
Mars air and like it. It turns out 
that there's something else he needs 
— something that's good for him 



and bad for other people, just like 
the Mars air. It's marcaine." 

Polly's face went white- Jim be- 
^Mi a guffaw of unbelief that 
lurned into a frown. He asked 
carefully; "How can that be, Doc? 
What is this all about? And who 
took him? We have a right to 
know." 

Anna came to Tony's rescue. 
"You're not going to know right 
now," she said tartly. "If you think 
that's hard on you, it's just too 
bid. You've got your baby back; 
now leave the doctor alone until 
he's ready to tell you more." 

Jim opened his mouth and shut 
it again. Polly asked only: "Doctor, 

are you sure?" 

"I'm sure. And it won't have 
anything like the effect on Sunny 

that it had on you. But it's real 
marcaine, all right, and he's got to 

have it or die." 

"Like OxEn?" asked Kandro. 
"It's only fair in a way . , ." 

TONY ignored him. "I guess 
you're going to have to wean 
the baby after all, Polly," he said. 
"You can't keep taking marcaine 
for Sunny's sake. But for now, I 
guess you might as well nurse him. 
Your milk still has marcaine in it." 

Kandro was still adjusting him- 
self to the idea, "Sunny doesn't 
need OxEn, so he's got to take 
something else?" 1 

"Yes,"' Tony said, "like Ox- 
En . . ." He broke off, and Anna 
spun toward him, her eyes wide. 



MARS CHILD 



95 



The doctor forced his I into 

calm lines. "I want to have a talk 
with Joe now. And Nick Cantrella, 

Anna, will you see ii you can get 
Nick on the intercom? Ask him to 
come over here right away. I've got 
an idea." 

In the living room, lie told Gra- 
ccy: "You won't have to keep an 
eye on them any more, Joe. But 
b me — I feel like Alexander, 
Napoleon, Eisenhower, i'nd the 
Great Cham all rolled into one." 
"You're certainly grinning like 
a lunatic.'" the agronomist agreed 
critically. "What's on your mind?'" 
"Wait a minute ... did you get 
him?" Tony asked as Anna came 
in to the room. 

"He's coming," she nodded. 
"Tony, what is it?" 

"I'll tell you both, soon," he 
promised. "Let's wait for Nick, so 
I won't have to repeat it." He paced 
restlessly around the room, think- 
ing it through again. It ought to 
work; it ought to! 

WHEN Cantrella arrived, he 
turned on the two men. 
"Listen, both of you!" He tried 
not to sound too cag^r. "If I 
handed you a piece of living tissue 
with a percentage of oxygen en- 
zyme — and I don't mean traces, I 
. ican a percentage — where would 
we stand in respect to . . ." He 
halted up the cautious complicated 

phraseology. "Hell, what I mean is, 
could we manufacture OxEn?" 
"The living virus? ' Graccy 



asked. "Not cry s tali zed OxEn 
processed for absorption?" 

"The living virus." 

"We'd be a damn sight better 
than half way along the proccssin 

thai the Kclsey people do in Louis- 
ville, lliey grow the first cultui 
from the Rosen batch, then the 

cull out all the competing enzymes, 

then they grow what's left and cull, 

for hundreds of stages, to get a 

pew entage of the living virus to 
grow a pure culture they can crop 
and start crystalizing." 

"How about it, Niek?" Tony de- 
manded. "Could the Lab swing a 
job of crystalizing a crop from thai 
and processing it for absorption?" 

"Sure/' said Nick. "That's the 
easy part. I've been reading up on 

it since we talked about it before." 
"Look here," Graccy exploded, 
"where do you think you're goin"; 
to get your living virus from? You 
have to keep getting it, you know. 
It always mutates under normal 
radiation sooner or later, and you 
have to start over again." 

"That's my end of the deal. I 

have a hunch I can get it. Thanks, 
both of you." He went into the 

nursery and told Polly calmly; 'Tm 

taking your youngster away again 
— just for a few minutes, though. 

I want to check his lun in the 

hospital. Anna?" She was already 
taking the baby from Polly's arms. 
Tony picked up the wrapped mar- 
cainc-box and started out. 

"Hey, Doc, what s on?" Gra- 
ccy demanded. 



*6 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



He 'brushed past Nick and the 
puzzled agronomist. * Tell you 
later," he called back. 

On the street, Anna turned a 
worried face up to his. 'Tony, 
what arc you doing? You can't 

operate on a five-day-old baby . . . 
can you?" she finished, less certain- 
ly. "You seem so — so happy and 
Sure of yourself." 

"I am," he said shortly, and 
then relented enough to add: "The 
'operation/ if you want to call it 
that, won't hurt him." But he 
wouldn't say any more. 

MIMI and Brenner were in 
Tony's living room. The 
woman said hopelessly : "Hello, 
Tony. Mr. Brenner's made an offer 
—Oh! It's Sunny!" 

"Hello, Mimi," said Tony. 

"The youngster, eh?" Brenner 
said genially. "I've heard about 
him." 

With a brusque "Excuse me" to 
the drug manufacturer, Tony said 
to Anna in an undertone: "Rig the 
op table, sterilites on. Get out the 
portable biopsy constant-tempera- 
ture bath and set the thermostat to 
Sunny* s blood temperature. And 

call me." 

She nodded and went into the 
hospital with the baby. Tony 
dropped his bundle into his trunk 
and began to scrub up. 

"What's been going on, Mimi?" 
he asked. 

"JMr. Brenner's offered five mil- 
lion, five hundred thousand dollars 



for Sun Lake's assets. I said the 
Council would put it in formal 
shape and call a vote." 

The descent from his peak of 
inspiration was sickening. Nothing 
had changed, then, Tony thought. 

"Ready," Anna said at his side. 
He followed her silently into the 
hospital, slipped into his gloves 
and said: "Sterilize the Byers cur- 
ette, third extension, and lubricate. 
Sterilize a small oral speculum." 
He spoke quietly. Graham was 
asleep in the bed across the room. 

Anna didn't move. "Anesthe- 
sia?" she asked. 

"None. We don't know their 
body-chemistry well enough." 

"No, Tony. Please, no!" 

He felt only a chill determina- 
tion that he was going to salvage 
some of the wreckage' of Sun Lake, 
determination and more confidence 
than he knew he should feel. Anna 
turned, selected the instruments 
and slipped them into the sterilizer. 
The doctor stepped on the pedal 
that turned on the op lights. 

Anna put the speculum into his 
hand and he clamped open -Sunny 's 
mouth. The prompt wail of protest 
turned to a strangled cry as the 
sinuous shaft of the Byers curette 
slid down the trachea into the left 
bronchus. One steady hand guided 
the instrument, while the other 
manipulated the controls from a 
bulb at its base. 

f, Hol4 him," Tony growled as 
Anna's hands weakened and the 
woman swayed. Bronchus, bronchia, 



MARS CHILD 



97 



bronchilc, probing and withdraw* 

ing at resistances — and there it 
was. A pressure on the central con- 
trol that uncovered the razor-sharp 
little spoon at the tip of the flexible 
shaft and covered it again, and then 
all flexure controls off and out. It 
had taken less than five seconds, 
and one more to deposit the shred 
of lung tissue in the biopsy con- 
stant-temperature nutrient bath. 

Hank was at the door. Anna, 
leaning feebly against the table, 

straightened to tell him; "Go and 
lie down, Hank. It's all right." 

"Keep him away from me," 
warned Graham from the bed. "He 
was going to jump me before." 

"I just wanted to see the baby," 
Hank said apologetically. 

Tony turned to the intercom, 

buzzing the Kandros'. "Come on 
over/ 1 he told them. "You can have 

your baby back for keeps now. Is 

Gracey still there? Joe? I think 
I've got that tissue specimen for 
you. How fast can you get a test?" 

"For God's sake, Tony, where 
did you get it?" Gracey was de- 
manding on the other end. 

"From a Brownie." He couldn't 
resist it. "That's what I said. Lung 
tissue of a Brownie." 
' He hung up. 

"A Brownie? It is true! There 
are Brownies, aren't there?" 

Tony turned to find the Kan- 
dros standing by the examination 
table. Polly already had her baby 
in her arms. 

Jim patted her shoulder. "He 



doesn't really mean it, Polly. Do 
you. Doc?'' 

Graham was grinning openly. 

Tony turned from one to the 
other, not answering. 

There was a commotion in the 
living room and Brenner burst in, 
carrying a familiar box. "He just 
dived for it, Tony," Mimi said. 
"He said it was ..." 

"Careful . r " said die doctor. 
"You'll spray marcaine all over the 
place. Put it down, man!" 

BRENNER did, and unwrapped 
it with practiced precision. 
"iMy stuff, Doctor," he said. 
"Think I don't know my own 
crates? Mrs. Jonathan, my price for 
your assets has just dropped to two 
and one-half million. And I am 

now in a position to prosecute. I 
hope none of you will make diffi- 
culties." 

Jim Kandro said, "I don't know 
what this is all about, but we need 
that stuff for Sunny." 

"You don't believe that, do 
you?" the drug maker asked scorn- 
fully. 

"I don't know what to believe," 
said Kandro. "But he's — different. 
And it makes sense. He doesn't 
have to take OxEn, so he has to 
take something else. You better 
leave it for us, Mr. Brenner." 

The drug maker looked at Jim 
wisely. "It's okay, Mac/' he dr 
cided. "If you've got the habit and 
you can't kick it, why don't you 
come to work for me? I can use 



98 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



you. And you don't have to take- 
so much. The micron dust in the 
air takes your edge off — " 

"That's not it," said Kandro. 
"Why don't you listen to me? We 
need that stuff for Sunny. The doc- 
tor says so and he ought to know. 
It's medicine, like vitamins. You 
wouldn't keep vitamins from a little 
baby, would you?" 

Graham snickered. 

i 

KANDRO turned and lectured 
angrily: "You stay out of 
this. There hasn't been anything 
but trouble since you got here. Now 
you could at least keep from bray- 
ing while a' man's trying to reason 
with somebody. You may be smart 
and a big writer, but you don't 
have any manners at all if you can't 
keep quiet at a time like this." 

He turned to Brenner. "You 
know we don't have any money 
here, or I'd offer you what we had. 
I guess the box is yours, and no- 
ibody has a claim to it except you. 
But Polly and roe can get permis- 
sion from the Council to go and 
work out whatever the box would 
cost. Couldn't we, Tony? Mimi? 
The rest would let us, wouldn't 
. they?" 

"I'm sorry, Mac," the drug 
maker said. "I wish I could make 
you understand, but if I can't, that 
doesn't matter. This box is going 

with me. It's evidence in a crime." 

"Mr. Brenner," Jim Kandro said 

thickly, "I can't let you out of here 

with that box. We need it for 



Sunny. I told you and told you. 
Now give it here." He put out 
one huge hand. 

"How about it, Mrs. Jonathan?" 
Brenner seemed to be. ignoring the 
big man's menacing advance. "Two 
and a half million? It's a very 
reasonable price, all things consid- 
ered. Your new father here would 
be glad to take it." 

"I'll take it, all right," growled 
Jim. "Hand it over. Right now." 
He was a scant four feet from the 
drug maker; Brenner's eyes were 
still fixed mockingly on Mimi 

Jonathan. 

Kandro took one more step for- 
ward and Anna cried faintly: 
"No!" 

Brenner stepped back and there 
was a large pislol in his hand. 

"This," he told them, "is fully 
automatic. It keeps firing as long 
as I hold the trigger down. Now 
for the last time listen, all of you. 
I'm going, and I'm taking my box 
with me. If you try to stop me, I 
have a perfect right to use this 
gun. You know better than I do 
what fingerprints the authorities 
will find on the box. You're caught 
red-handed and I won't have any 
trouble proving it to my man Bell. 
If you people decide to be reason- 
able instead, you better let me know 
— soon." 

Mimi Jonathan said clearly: "So 
you're going to throw us off Mars, 
Mr/ Brenner?" 

"If necessary," he said, not fol- 
lowing. 



MARS CHILD 



*9 



"You mean you're going to kick 
us out and we'll never see Mars 
again? And all the sacrifices we've 
made here will be a joke?" 

He didn't get what she was driv- 
ing at. "Yes," he said irritably. 
"You're quite right — " 

He was cut off by Hank, broken 
at last under the goading. The 
youngster sprang, raving, at Bren- 
ner, bowling him over as the pistol 
roared in a gush of bullets that 
ripped Hank's body. 

And then there was a silence into 
which Sunny Kandro shrieked his 
fear and dismay. Mimi leaned 
against the wall and shut her eyes. 
She wm'cd to vomit. She heard 
Tony's awed whisper: u . . . 
I lii's trachea . . . broke his 
neck . . . belly shot clean out . . ." 
She shuddered, and hoped and 
feared that she'd carry this guilt 
alone to the grave. 

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 

"Z^IOME on, Polly. You come 

V^ out here/' Kandro led his 
wife. Still carrying Sunny, out to 
the living room. 

Faces were peering through the 
hospital window and they heard 
Nick Cantrella shouting: "Let me 
through, damnit! Clear away from 
that door!" And he was in, latch- 
ing the door from the street. He 
snapped the curtains shut with an 
angry yank. "What in God's name 
happened? I was coming for that 
tissue culture and now this — " 



"Don't worry about it," said 
Graham drily and with effort from 
the bed. "Just a little useful mur- 
der. Hank Radcliff, hero of the 
Colony, gives his life to save the 
world from Big Bad Brenner — 
sweet Jesus!" he swore in awed 
delight "What a story! The Kill- 
ing of Hugo Brenner' — an eye-wit- 
ness account by Douglas Graham! 
Swce-eet Jesus ! Didn't Brenner 
know who I was?" 

Mimi started. "I guess not," she 
realized. "I never told him." 

"You're plenty beat up," Tony 
pointed out. "He wouldn't have 
recognized you. Hey, Nick, let's 
get those bodies out of here." 

"Beat up is right," Graham 
chortled, "and it was worth it! 
Thank yon, my friends, whichever 
one of you — or how many was it ? 
— did -that job on me. I thank you 
from the bottom of my poor old 
gunther's heart. Just to be able to 
lie here and listen to all that!" 

"I don't know who did it last 
time." Nick took one menacing 
step toward the bed. "But, by God, 
if you're starting on another of your 
yarns, I know who's going to . . ." 

"Nick, wait a minute. You don't 
know what he heard." 

"Hey, Cantrella, I need a hand 
here." 

"J know who did it." Anna had 
to shout to make herself heard 
above Mimi and Tony, both talk- 
ing at once. In the sudden silence, 
she said: "Didn't I tell you, Tony? 
I guess It was while you were away 



TOO 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



that I found out. They did it. I 

think be was planning to hurt the 

baby. Or they thought he was/' 
r "l'bey?" the writer a -iked con- 
i nptuously. " Browi uyain ? 

You're a good second-guesser, Miss 

Willcndorf, but you missed out this 
time. The only designs I ever had 
on the Kandro kid were to get him 
buck to Earth Where he could be 
properly cared for — instead of get- 
ting marcaine dosed out to him to 
cover up for Mania." 

<<T ISTEN, you lying crimp.' 1 
JL-J Nick continued his arrested 

advance on Graham. "If you think 
you're safe to turn out more of that 
kind of stuff just because you're 
laid up in bed, you better start 
thinking all over again. I've got no 
compunctions about kicking a rat 

when he's down." 

"Nick! Stop it!" Swift and sure 
and deadly sharp, Mimi's voice 
came across the room like a har- 
poon. "Give him a chance! You 
didn't hear what he heard — what 
Brenner said. I don't sec how any- 
body could get a story against Sun 
Lake out of it." 

"Thank you kindly, mam." Gra- 
ham grinned painfully. "Good to 
know somebody around here is still 
sane. Don't tell me you go for this 
Brownie nonsense too!" 

"I — don't know. she said. "If 
I'd heard it from anybody but Tony 
and Anna, I wouldn't believe ;i 

word of it. But they did get the 
baby back." 



"Back from where?" 

Tony realized for the first time 
that Graham didn't even know 
about Sunny' s kidnaping. And the 
others, for that matter, still didn't 
know what had happened in the 
cave. 

"Listen," he said. "If you'll all 
take it easy for a few minutes, Anna 
and I have a lot to tell you. But 
first .. . Nick, help me move them 
to the living room floor. Anna, get 
blankets to cover diem." 

"Wait a minute." She went into 
the living room. "All right," she 
called back a moment later, and 
Tony and Nick together carried 
what was left of Hank through the 
door. "I wanted to get the Kan- 
dros out first," Anna explained, 
locking the front door again. 

They laid out Brenner's body 
next to Hank's, and covered them 
both with blankets. The two men 
started back to the hospital, but 
Anna laid her hand on Tony's arm 

to stop him. 

"Could I see you a minute?" 

"Of course." He let Nick go 
ahead, then asked, worried, "An- 
sie, darling, what's the matter?" 

She closed the door firmly be- 
tween them and the Others in the 
hospital. 

"Tony, we can't tell them," she 
said. "Not now." 

"Why not? They've got to 
biow." 

"Don't you see? We shouldn't 
have talked as much as we did. We 
shouldn't have said or done any- 



MARS CHILD 



101 



thing in front of Graham, but he 
doesn't believe it yet. If we con- 
vince him — Tony, the Brownies are 
terrified of people. They've kept 
awVy from people all along. For a 
reason. Don't you see?" she asked 
urgently. "Think what would hap- 
pen to them. Think! I got just a 
flash from Graham's mind when I 
said they did it, before he decided 
to be skeptical. It was brutal. 
They'd be exterminated. . . ." 

He did see it. She was right. He 
thought of Hackenburg over at 
Pittco, and Brownies being worked 
in the mines — "native labor." He 
thought of what an Earth power 
would give to have telepaths in its 
military intelligence. He thought 
of the horror and hatred people 
would feel for the "mind-reading 
monsters. " He thought of Brown- 
ies in zoos, on dissecting tables , . . 

HE thought of Sun Lake, still 
facing a charge of theft; 
of the difference it would make in 
Graham's story if he knew it 
ivasn't Sun Lakers who attacked 
him. He thought of what the ex- 
istence of the Brownies would mean 
to medical and biochemical re- 
search. And he made up his mind. 

Anna looked away with* anger in 
her eyes, hopelessness in the set of 
her shoulders. 

"Why?" she begged. "They're— 
oh, Tony, they're decent! Not like 
most people." 

"Because we know about them, 
that's why. Because you can't — you 



just can't keep a secret like that. 
Because it means too much to men, 
to all men, to mankind, or what- 
ever part of it survives the end of 
Earth. Anna, Sun Lake may not be 
the answer to our future — the 
Brownies may be. Have you 
thought of that? They need us, 
they need to learn some of the 
things our civilization has to offer 
—-and we need them. That piece of 
tissue I took from Sunny's lungs 
may mean the end of dependence 
on Earth for OxEn, and that's just 
one first thing. There's no knowing 
how much we can learn, how they 
can help us to adapt, what new 
knowledge will come out of the 
contact. We can't keep it to our- 
selves. That's all there is to it." 

"There's no use arguing, is 
there?" 

"I'm afraid not," he said as 
gently as he could. He opened the 
door. "Are you coming back?" 

She hesitated, then followed. 



u 



"fTlKAT'S it," Tony wound up 
-L the narrative of their visit 
to the cave, and then repeated, this 
time to Graham: "That's it. But I 
think you ought to know that Anna 
was trying to persuade me not to 
tell this story in front of you, to 
let you go on not believing in 
Brownies. She was afraid of what 
people would do to them once it 
became known. I'm afraid too. 
What you write will have a lot to 



102 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



do with it." He paused. 'What 
are you going to write?" 

"I'm damned if I know!" Gra- 
ham tried to lift his head, and de- 
cided against it. "It's either the 
most ingenious yarn I've ever heard 
— it covers every single accusation 
against you people, from marcaine 
theft to mayhem on my person — 
or it's the biggest story in the 
world. And I'm damned if I know 
which! 11 

He relapsed into a thoughtful 
silence, broken suddenly by the 
roar of a large plane. An instant 
later there was the noise of a sec- 
ond, and then a third. One at a 
time they came closer, and died 

out. 

"That would be Bell." Mimi 
Stood up wearily.- "I don't mind 
saying I'm confused. What do we 
do now?" 

"He's coming/ 1 Tony reminded 
her, "to help Mr. Graham. Per- 
haps we should leave it up to our 
guest to tell the Commissioner 

whatever he sees fit." 

The writer was silent, stony- 
faced. 

"There's a slight matter of a. 
couple of stiffs in the living room/" 
Nick reminded them. "The Com- 
mish might want to know about 
them. Strictly inter-colony stuff." 

"You know," Graham broke in 
suddenly, "if I was dumb enough 
to believe your story about Brown- 
ies — and if your little experiment 
with the kid's lungs works — Sun 
Lake could get to be quite a place/* 



ii 



» 



Gracey 



How do you mean? 1 
asked, 

"The way Mr. Brenner had it 
figured, your Lab is practical!) 
made to order for marcaine manu- 

Cture. And I gadier you think 
you can turn out OxEn too, if th 

Jung tissue is good. If there's any- 
thing behind all this Brownie talk 
— well, you've got a deal that looks 
worth a trillion. You can supply 
OxEn to all of Mars at what price? 
It wouldn't cost you anything com- 
pared to Earth-import . . /' 

He looked around the circle of 
astonished faces. 

"Don't tell me none of you even 

thought of that? Not even yon?" 
he appealed to Mimi. 

She shook her head. "That's not 
the Sun Lake idea," she said stiffly. 
"We wouldn't be interested." 

Anna smiled, very slightly, and 

there was a violent banging at the 
front door. 



» w ■ 

ill 



TONY went slowly through the 
living room. The door was be- 
ginning to shake under the blows. 

"Cut that out and 111 open it!" 
he yelled. There was silence as he- 
swung the door open. A sergeant 
of the guards, three others, and 
Bell, who was well in the rear. He- 
must have known there'd been 
shooting. 

"What's been going on?" tl 
Commissioner began. He sniffi I 
the air and his eyes traveled to the 



MARS CHILD 



103 



covered bodies. "Graham? If it is, 
we might have a murder arrest. His 
dispatch gave you people plenty of 
motive/' 

"No. Brenner/' Tony said short- 
ly. "And a young man named Hank 
Radcliff." 

Bell, starting for the figures, re- 
coiled. "Sergeant," he said, and 
gestured. The non-com gingerly 
drew back the blankets, exposing 
the drug maker's face. The Com- 
missioner stared for a long moment 
and said hoarsely: "Cover it, Ser- 
geant" He turned to Tony. "What 
happened?" ■% 

"We have a disinterested wit- 
ness," said the doctor. "Douglas 
Garharn. He saw the whole thing." 

rpONY led the way into the hos- 
\JL pital. The sergeant followed, 
then the Commissioner. Graham 
said from his bed: "Visiting a dead 
friend?" 

Bell snapped: "It's an inter-col- 
ony crime. Murder. Obviously I 
can't take the word of anybody 
who's a member of this community. 
Did you witness the killing?" 

"I was a witness, all right," said 
Graham. "Best damn witness you 
ever saw. Billions of readers hang 
on my every word." He made an 
effort and raised himself on one 
elbow. "Remember the chummy 
sessions we used to have in Wash- 
ington, Bell?" 

On the Commissioner's forehead^ 
sweat formed. 

"Here's the story of the killing," 



said Graham. "Brenner pulled his 
gun on a man named Kandro dur- 
ing a little dispute. He threatened 
to kill Kandro, went into some de- 
tail about how fully automatic that 
gun was and — let me think — his 
exact words were 'spray the room.' 
With a babe in arms present. 
Think of it, Bell! Not even you 
would have done a thing like that; 
not even in the old days. The Rad- 
cliff kid jumped Brenner and took 
all the slugs in his belly. I guess 
they were dumdums, because the 
gun looked to me like a .38 and 
none of them went through. Only 
the Radcliff boy squashed Bren- 
ner's neck before he knew he was 
dead. Reminded me of a time once 
in Asia — 

Bell cut him off. "Did Brenner 
die right away? Did he — say any- 
thing before he died?" 

"Deathbed confession? Delirious 
rambling ? No." 

The Commissioner relaxed per- 
ceptibly. 

"But" said the newsman, "He 
talked quite a bit before he pulled 
the gun- He didn't recognize me 
with my battered face and 'I didn't 
introduce myself. He thought it 
was just a bunch of Sun Lakers in 
here and that nobody would believe 
a word they said about him. Bren- 
ner talked quite a bit." 

"Sergeant!" Bell broke in. "I 
won't be needing you for a while- 
Wait for mc in the other room. 
And see to it nobody touches those 
bodies!" 



104 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



THE door closed behind the 
non-com, and Graham laughed, 
"Maybe you do know, eh, Com- 
mish? Maybe you know Brenner 
III I to refef to you as 'my man 

Bell'?" 

The Commissioner's eyes ran un- 
happily around the room. "You 
people/ 1 he said. "Get out. All of 
you. Leave us alone — so I can take 

statement/' 

"No," said Graham, "they stay 
here. I'm not a strong man these 

days, but Brenner talked quite a 

bit I wouldn't want anything to 

Stop me from getting the story to 

m\ eagerly waiting world/' 

Bell looked around hopelessly. 
Tony saw Nick's face twist into a 
knowing, malevolent grin; like the 
others, he made an effort to imi- 
tate it. 

"What do you want, Graham?" 

asked the Commissioner. "What 
are you trying to get at?" 

"Not a thing," the writer said 
blandly. "By the way, in my state- 
ment on the killing, should I in- 
clude what Brenner had to say 
about you? He mentioned some 
financial matters, too. Would they 
be relevant?" 

Tony tried to remember what 
financial matters Brenner had dis- 
cussed, aside from the price he 
offered for the Colony. None — but 
Graham was a shrewd bluffer. 

The Commissioner made a la 
effort to pull himself together. 
"You can't intimidate me, Gra- 
ham," he rasped. "And don't think 



I can't be tough if you force my 
hand. I'm in the el ear. I don't care 
what Brenner said; I haven't done 
a thing." 

"Yet/* said the writer succinct- 
ly. "Your part was to come Later, 
wasn t it.' 

Bell's face seemed to collapse. 

"Still think you can get tough?" 
Graham jeered. "Try it, and I 
guarantee thai you'll be hauled back 
to Earth on the next rocket, to be 
tried for malfeasance, exceeding 
your authority, accepting bribes and 
violating the narcotics code. I can 
also guarantee that you will be 
convicted and imprisoned for the 
rest of your life. Don't try to bluff 
me, you tin-horn sport. I've been 
bluffed by experts." 

THE Commissioner began shrilly, 
"I won't stand for — " and 
cracked. "For God's sake, Graham, 
be reasonable! What have I ever 
done to you? What do you want? 
Tell me what you want!" 

The writer fell back on the bed. 
"Nothing right now, thanks. If I 
think of anything, I'll let you 

know/" 

The Commissioner started to 

speak, and couldn't. Tony saw the 

eins of tension stand out. He saw, 

too, how Anna's lip was curling in 

disgust, 

Graham seemed amused. "There 
is one thing, Commish. An inter- 
colony matter under your jurisdi< 
lion, I believe. Will you remove 
those carcasses on your way out? 



MARS CHILD 



105 



You'd be surprised how sensitive I 
am about such things/' 

He closed his eyes and waited 
till the door was shut behind the 
departing guest. When he opened 
them again, all the self-assurance 
was gone out of them. 

"Doc/" he moaned, "give me a 
shot. When I got up on my elbow 
something tore. God, it hurts!" 

"While Tony took care of him, 
Joe Graccy said: "It was a grand 
performance, Mr. Graham. Thank 
you for what you did." 

"I can undo it," the reporter 
said flatly, "or I can use it any way 
I want to. If you people have been 
lying to me ..." He sighed with 
relief. "Thanks, Doc. That's a help. 
Now if you want anything out of 
my man Bell — show me one of 
your Brownies!" 

CHAPTER 1WENTY--SEVEN 

GRAHAM'S challenge fell into 
a silent room. Everyone wait- 
ed for Tony to speak; Tony waited 
for Anna. 

"I don't, see why not," she said 
at last. "I guess they'd do it." She 
looked despairingly at Tony. "Is 
this the only way?" she pleaded. 

"It's the only way you're going 
to beat that marcaine-theft rap," 
Graham answered for hi*m. 

"All right. I'll go out there in 
the morning. I think I can talk 
them into it." 

"If you don't mind, Miss Willen- 
dorf, I'd rather it was right now. 



In twelve hours, your hot-shot en- 
gineer here could probably build 
a Brownie." 

"I can try," she said. "But I 
can't promise. Not even for tomor- 
row. I only think I can talk one of 
them into coming here. . I don't 
know how they'll feel about it." 

Graham grinned. "That's about 
how I figured it," he said. "Thanks, 
folks. It was a good show while it 
lasted." 

"We're going," Tony said grim- 
ly. "And we'll bring you back a 
Brownie." 

"Still not good enough," the 
writer said. "If you go, I go with 
you. You mind if I'm just a little 
suspicious?" 

"It's ten kilometers to the Rim- 
rocks," Tony told him. "Most of 
it by half track, the rest by 
stretcher for you." 

"The hell with your humanitar- 
ian sentiments! It's your medical 
opinion, if any, that I want!" 
"You'll live. No danger of that." 
"All right," the writer said. 
"When do we start?" 

Tony looked questioningly at 
Anna, who nodded. "Right now," 
the doctor said, "or any time you're 
ready." He opened a cabinet and 
fished out a patent-syringe am- 
poule. "This should make it easier." 
He started to open the package. 

"No, thanks," Graham said. "I 
want to see what / sec — if any- 
thing." His eyes went swiftly from 
one face to another, studying them 
for reactions. 



106 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



"If you can take it, I can," the 
doctor told him. But he dropped 
the package in his pocket before 
they left. 

IN THE rattling half track, with 
Anna driving and Tony in the 
truck body beside Graham, the 
writer said through clenched teeth: 
"God help you if you tell me the 
Brownies aren't biting tonight. It's 

a damn-fool notion" anyway. You've 
been telling me Brownies are born 
of Earth people. Why aren't there 
any born on Earth?" 

'It's because of what the geneti- 
cists call a lethal gene. Polly and 
Jim, for instance. Each one of them 
had a certain lethal gene in their 

heredity. Either of them could have 
married somebody without the 
lethal gene and had ordinary 
babies, on Earth or on Mars, be- 
cause the gene is a recessive. On 
Earth, when Polly's lethal gene and 
Jim's lethal gene matched, it was 
fatal to their offspring. They never 
came to term; the gene produced 
a foetus which couldn't survive the 
womb on Earth. I don't know what 
factors are involved in that failure 
— cosmic rays, the gravity or what. 
But on Mars the foetus comes to 
term and is — a Brownie. 

"A Brownie is a Martian. They 
don't just accept Mars air like an 
Earthman with Mars worthy lungs. 
They can't stand Earth air. And 
they need a daily ration of marcaine 
to grow and live. That's who stole 
Brenner's marcaine. That's why 



they slipped marcaine into Poll/ 
Kandro's food. They wanted her 
to pass it to Sunny in her milk. 
When we put Sunny on the bottle, 
they stole him so they could give 
him marcaine. They surrendered 
him on our promise to see that he 
got^ it." 

''And that's a perfect cover-story 
for a dope-addict mama," scoffed 
the writer. "'How many Brownies 

are there supposed to be?" 

"A couple of hundred. I sup- 
pose about half of them are first- 
generation. There must have been 
a very few in the beginning, chil- 
dren of homesteaders abandoned 
on a desert ranch when their par- 
ents died, who crawled out and 
lived off the country, chewing mar- 
caine out of the weed. And they 
must have 'stolen' other Brownie 
babies from other homesteaders 
when they grew." 

Graham swore against the pain. 
"The Kandro kid looks as normal 
as any other baby. How are the 
Brownies supposed to know he 
isn't? Does he give them a pass- 
word?" 

Tony explained wearily : ''They 
are telepathic. It explains a lot of 
things — 'Why they're only seen by 

people they want to see them, why 
they could steal Brenner's marcaine 
and not get caught. They can hear 
people coming — their thoughts, 
that is. That's why they beat up 
Big Ginny; she was aborting a 
Brownie baby. Why they beat the 
hell out of you. Why they sensibly 



MARS CHILD 



107 



keep away from most Earth peo- 
ple/' 

"Except Red Sand Jim Gran.it a, 

eh?" 

"Granata was a liar. He prob- 
ably never saw a Brownie in his 
life. He heard all the Brownie* 
yarns and used them to put on 

good commercial shows." 

Anna maneuvered the half track 
around a spur of rock picked out 
by the headlights and ground the 
vehicle to a stop. "It's too ru; d 
from her* miu" she said. "'We'll 
have to carry him the rest of [he 
way." 

"You warm enough ? Another 
blanket?" asked Tony. 

You're really going through 
with this, aren't you?" said the 
riter. "I'm crazy to play along, 
but // — // this is a story and I get 
beaten on it — Oh, hell, yes, I'm 
warm enough. Stretcher ought to 
be easier going than this tin can." 

ANNA 1 d, with Graham sway- 
ing between them on a shoul- 
i r-suspC i w led litter that left the 

hearers' hands i rce. The writer 
weight was not much of a burden 

m this gravity. Both she and Tony 

used torches to pick their way 
among the scree that had dribbled 

lor millenia, one stone at a time, 
down the weathering Rim rock 
They smellcd the acrid fumes of 
Pittco across the hills, fouling the 

night air, and Graham began to 
cough. 

"Anna?" asked the doctor. 



She knew what lie meant, and 
said shortly: "Not yet." 

Another hundred meters, and 
Tony felt her begin to pull off to 
the right. Her "homing" led them 
to the foot of the mcsalike hills 
few meters from a cave mouth. 
They headed in. 

"Quite soon," said Anna, and 
then: "We can put him down.' 

"Be very quiet," Tony told the 
writer. He himself felt the f.\in 
et "touch" of a Brownie in hi 
mind. "Tlv. e \ sensiti\ 

to . . r 

"Gdrg&l" shrieked Graham as a 
Brownie stepped into the beam 
"oin Anna's lij . It clapped its 
hands over its ears and fled. 

"Now see what you did!" rage 
Anna in mi angry whisper. "Their 

cars — you almost deafened him.'' 

"Get him back!" The writer's 
voice was tremulous. 

"I don't know if I lm\," Anna 
u'd coldly. "He doesn't have to 
take orders from you or me. All I 
can do is try." 

"You'd better. It scared the hell 
out of me, I admit, but so did the 
Brownies in Granata' S Interplanet- 
ary Show, and they were fakes." 

"Man, didn't you jeel it?" asked 

Tony incredulously. 

"What?" asked Graham. 
"Please be quiet, both of you!" 
They waited a long time in the 
cold corridor before the thing re- 
appeared, stepping warily into the 
.circle of light- 
Suddenly Anna laughed. "He 



108 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 




wants to know why you want to 
pull his ears off. He sees you think- 
ing of pulling his ears and the ears 
coming off and he's as puzzled as 
he can be." 

"Shrewd guess," said Graham. 
"Do I get to pull them?" 

"No. If you have any cjucstions, 
tell me, and I'll try to ask him." 

"I think it's a fake. Come out: 



from behind those whiskers, who- 
ever you are. Still man? Graccy? 
No, you're too short. I'll bet you're 
that little punk Tad Campbell 
from the radio shack. I'd like to 
get my hands on those flapping 
cars just for one second." 

"This isn't getting us anywhere," 
said Tony. "Graham, you think of 
a person or a scene or something, 



MARS CHILD 



109 



the Brownie will get it telepathi- 
cally, give It to Anna and she'll 

\y what it is." 
"Fail enough," **said the writer. 

I don't know what it's supposed 
to prove, but it's some kind of 
test. I'm thinking.*' 

A moment later Anna said even- 
ly: ''If you weren't beaten up al- 
ready, I'd slap your face off." 

"I'm sorry," said Graham hast- 
ily. "I was only kidding. I didn't 
really think it would — but it did, 
didn't it?" With mounting excite- 
ment he said: "Ask him who he 
is, who bis people were, whether 

he's married, how old he is — " 

Anna held up her hand. "That's 
enough to - start. I can't think of 
any way to ask his name. His par- 
c nts — not Brownies, homesteaders 

— a shack and a goat — a kitchen 
arden— tall, tall people, the man 
wears thick glasses — Tony! It's the 
Tollers!" 

"That's impossible," he said. 
"Their son's on Earth. He never 
nswers their letters," the doctor 
remembered. "They keep writing, 
and — How old was he when he 
left?" 

"I don't know," she answered a 
moment later. "He doesn't under- 
stand the question." 

"I felt it," said the writer, sud- 
denly, in a frightened voice. "Like 
a thing touching you inside your 
head. Is that him?" 

"That's him. Just don't fight it." 

After a long silence Gra- 
ham said quietly: "Hell, he's all 



ght They're all-right people, 
aren't they?" 

"Do you want to ask him any 
more questions?" asked Anna. 

"A million of them. But not 
right now. Can I come back again ? 
asked the writer slowly and heavi- 
ly. "When I'm in better shape ?'" 
He waited for Anna's nod, tin 
said: "Will you say thanks to him 
and get me to the 'track?" 

"Pain worse?" asked Tony. 

"No, I don't think so. Hell, I 
don't know. As a matter of fact, 
I'm just worn out." 

The Brownie glided from the 
circle of light. M 'By, fell 1/ said 
Graham, and then grinned weak- 
ly. "He said good-by back at me!" 

Swaying between them on the 
litter on the way back to the 'track, 

the writer said at last; "Two Sys- 
tem beats. Eyewitness account of 
Drug King Brenner's death, and 
the first factual eyewitness account 
of extraterrestrial intelligent life. 
One nt man per century gets one 
story like this. And I've got J wo!" 
They loaded him into the half- 
track. He broke silence only once 
on the bumpy trip back to Sun 
Lake, saying with a chuckle: "I 
think he liked me/' And then he 
fell quietly asleep. 



11 



GRACEY and Nick and half a 
dozen of the biochem lab boys 

were waiting for them at the ho 
prtal. Joe must have been watching 



110 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



out the window, -because he ran 
out to meet them. 

It was late, and the lights were 
already out in most of the double- 
row of rust-brown huts. But Joe 
Gracey, the quiet one, the gentle 
ex-professor, possessor of eternal 
calm and detachment, came flying 
down the dim street, shouting: 
"Doc! Tony! We've got iti" 

"Sh-h . . " Tony nodded to- 
ward the dozing man on the shoul- 
der litter, but Graham was already 

opening his eyes. y 

"What's up?" he asked mush- 
ily. "What's all excitement?" 

"Nothing at all," the doctor tried 
to tell him. "We're back in the 
Colony. And you're going to bed. 
Hold on just a minute, will you, 
Joe?" He knew how Gracey felt; 
it was hard enough to restrain his 
own jubilance and keep his voice 
in neutral register. But Graham had 
had enough for one night, and 
Tony had to get his patient back 
to the hospital bed before he could 
take time to listen even to such 
news as Gracey bore. 

Joe helped them get the writer 
comfortably settled, and waited im- 
patiently while the doctor made a 
quick check for any possible dam- 
age done by the trip. Finally, Anna 
pulled up the covers, and the three 

of them started out. 

"Oh, Doctor . . ." Tony turned 
to find Graham up again on one 
elbow, wide-eyed and not a bit- 
sleepy. **I was just wondering if I 
could have my typewriter." Before 



Tony could answer, the elbow col- 
lapsed and Graham smiled rue- 
fully. "I guess not. I couldn't work 
it You don't have anything as 
luxurious as an Earthside dictatyper 

in the place, do you?" 

"Sure," Tony told him. "We've 
got one in the Lab office. You get 
some rest now, and we'll set it up 
for you here in the morning." 

"I'm okay," Graham insisted. 
"There's something I'd like to get 
on paper right away. I won't be 
able to sleep anyhow if I don't get 
it done." 

"You'll sleep," the doctor said. 
"I can give you a shot." 

"No." Graham was determined. 
"If you can't get the dictatyper out 
here now, how about some pencil 
and paper? I think I still know 
how to use them." 

'Til see what we can do. Anna, 
will you come with me?" 

TONY led her, not to the living 
room where the others were 
waiting, but into the bedroom. 
"How about it?" he asked in a 
whisper. "How's he feeling?" 

"It's a funny mixture, Tony," 
she said, "but I think it's all right. 
He's not nearly as excited as he 
was before. He's eager, but calm 
and — well, it's hard to express, but 

honest, too." ' 

"Right." He tightened his hand 
swiftly on her shoulder, and smiled 
down at her small earnest face. "A 
man could get too used to this," 
he said. "How do you suppose I 



MARS CHILD 



111 



got along before I knew about 

He strode into the living room 
and consulted briefly with Nick, 
after ,which two of the men from 
the biochem section tramped out 
to the Lab, and brought back the 
machine for Graham to use. 

Through the living room door, 
Tony heard the writer's voice 
droning on, dictating, and the soft 
tapping of the machine. But what 
was going on in the hospital didn't 
seem important. 

THE thing that mattered was the 
tiny pinch of pink ptfwder 
Nick and Joe had been waiting to 
show him. 

"Tony," said Nick, exultantly, 
"look at this stuff! It's damn near 
oral-administration OxEn. Took it 
through twelve stages of concen- 
tration and we'll take it through 
exactly three more to completion 
when Anna blows some hyvac cells 
for us. I tried and all I got was 
blistered fingers." 

"It works?" asked Tony. 

"It's beautiful," said Gracey. 
"The Kelsey people must have fifty 
contaminants they don't even sus- 
pect are there. Now I want to know 
where that sample tissue came from 
and where you're going to get 
more. And what did you mean 
about Brownies?" 

"Didn't Nick tell you?" Tony 
looked from the puzzled face to 
the startled one, and chortled ap- 
preciatively. "You mean you've 



been working together on this thing 
all evening and you never . . .?" 
"He didn't ask," Cantrclla said 
defensively. "Anyhow, we weren't 
working together. We weren't even 
in the same Lab." 

"Okay," Tony grinned, "here 
goes again. You gave me the idea 
originally, Joe. As much as any 
one person or thing did. You were 
talking the other day about lethal 
genes. Remember, I tried to ask 
you about it this afternoon?"^ 
"When Mimi blew up? Sure." 
"That's when it hit me. I got 
that lung tissue from Sunny Kan- 
dro, Joe. After we brought him 
home. He's a Brownie . . . the re- 
sult of a Mars-viable gene that's 
lethal on Earth." 

"And there are more of them?" 
Gracey leaned forward excitedly. 
"Are they cooperative? Will they 
answer questions? And submit to 
examination? When can I see 
one?" 

"They're cooperative," Anna 
said, smiling. "The reason you 
haven't seen one yet is that they 
can't stand humans — too uncoop- 
erative to suit them. Examinations? 
I don't see why not, if your inten- 
tions are honorable. They're tele- 
paths, so they'd know you didn't 
mean to harm them." 

"Telepaths !" Gracey breathed 
the word as Nick exclaimed it. 
"What other changes," the agrono- 
mist started to ask, then said in- 
stead; "No sense you telling me. I 
will see one? Soon?" 



112 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



ANNA nodded. "Why not? 
They were willing to talk to 
him." She motioned to the closed 

hospital door. 

"How about new tissue then?" 
Joe asked her. "Can we get it when 
we need it? You know how this 
Stuff works? The old culture keeps 
mutating, and you have to start U 
over again, Wc can't keep taking 
slices out of Sunny all the time/' 

"I don't know/ 1 she hud to ad- 
mit. "J don't know if they could 
understand what you wajit it for, 
or why you're doing it." 

"I don't think we'll have any 

trouble/ 1 Tony put in. "Nick, our 
Lab is equipped to turn out mar- 
line, isn't it ?" 

"Well, hell — yes, of course, but 
what for?" 

"M.uv.iinc and OxEn both? Do 
we have the facilities lor it?" 

"Sure. Processing the OxEn 
won't take up much." 

"Then I'm sure we can get our 

lung-scrapings," the doctor said. 
"What do you say, Ansae?" The 
name slipped out, and he never 
even noticed the sudden startled 

exchange of looks between the 
other men. He did notice the 
woman's slight hesitation and half- 
hidden smile. "Will they do it? 
After all, you're the expert on 
Brownies." 

"They like us," she said thought- 
fully. "They trust us, too. They 
need marcaihe. Yes, I think they'd 
do it." 

"Doc!" It "was Graham, calling 



from inside. Tony opened the door. 
"There anything left in that bottle 
of mine?" 

"Hasn't been touched." 

"Pour me a shot, will you? A 
good, long one. I'm not in such 
hot shape. And pa$s the bottle 
around." 

Tony filled a glass generously. 

Take it and go to sleep/ 1 he or- 
dered. "You're going to feel worse 
tomorrow." 

"Thanks. That's what I call a 
bedside manner." 

Graham grinned and tossed off 
the drink with a happy shudder. 
"I've got sonic copy here," he said. 
"Can Stillman get it out tonight?" 

w 

TONY took the typed papf 
from the dictating machine 
and paused a moment, irresolutely. 
Graham laughed sleepily. "It's 
in the clear," he said. "No code. 

And you can read it if you like. 
Two messages and Take One of 
the biggest running story of the 
century." 

"Thanks/* said Tony. "Good 
night/' He closed the door firmly 
behind him. 

"Story from Graham," he* said 
to the group. He buzzed 'Harve. 

"Read it!" said Nick. "And if 
that lying fat pulls another — " 

Tony gathered courage at last to 
run his eyes over the copy, and 
gasped with relief. 

" 'Message to Marsport com- 
munications,' " he read. w 'Kill all 
copy previously sent for upcoming 



MARS CHILD 



113 



substitutes, Douglas Graham.' And 
'Message to Commissioner Hamil- 
ton Bell, Marsjportj Administration. 
As interested lay observer strongly 
urge you withdraw intended appli- 
ition of Ti Fifteen search cor- 
don to Sun Lake Colony. Personal 
investigation convinces me theft 
allegations unfounded, Title Fif- 
teen application grave injustice 
which my duty expose fullest be- 
fore public and official circles on 
return Earth. Appreciate you -mes- 
sage me acknowledgment. Doug- 
las Graham/ M 

NICK'S yell of triumph hit the 
roof. "What are we waiting 
for?" he demanded. "Where's 
Mimi? We have packing to do!" 

"What's the matter with him?" 
asked Harve Stillman, coming in. 

Tony was reading the last of 
the messages to himself. 

Anna told him: "You dike that 
one best of all. What's in it?" 

He looked up with a grin across 
his face. "I'm sorry/* he said. 
"This is how it starts: '.Marsport 
communications, sub following for 
previous copy, which kill. By 
Douglas Graham. With Brownies, 
lead to come.' Harve, what does 
that mean ?" 

The ex- wire-serviceman snap- 
ped: "It's additional copy- on a 
story about Brownies — the first part 

isn't ready to go yet. What's he 
say, Tony?" 

The doctor read happily: " 'The 
administrative problems raised by 



this staggering discovery are not 

great. It is fortunate that Dr. Hell- 
ni. mi and Miss Willendorf, co-dis- 
COVerers of the Martians, are per- 
sons of unquestioned integrity, 
profoundly interested in protecting 
the new race from exploitation. I 
intend to urge the appointment of 
one of them as special Commis- 
sioner for theP.A.C. to take charge 
of Brownie welfare and safety. 
There must be no repetition of 
the tragedies that marked Earthly 
colonial expansion when greedy 
and shortsighted — ' " 

"Damn, that's great," muttered 
the radio man. "Let me file it." 

The doctor, with the grin still 
on his face, handed over the COpy 

and Harve raced out. 

"1 told you," said Anna. 

Joe Gracey said: "Well, I cer- 
tainly hope whichever one of you 
turns out to be Commissioner is 

going to give us Lab men a decent 
chance at research on the Brownies. 
1 was thinking — »I could probably 
work out a test for the lethal gene, 
or Brownie gene, better call it. 
Spermatozoa for a male, a polar 
body or an ovum from a female 
and we'd be able to tell — M 

"No!" said Anna hysterically. 
"No, no!" 

The others were shocked into 
silence. 

"I'll take you home, Ansie," said 
Tony 

He took her arm .uul they 
walked out into the icy night down 
the Colony street. 



114 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



"Ansie, I've been sort of taking 
tilings for granted. I should ask 
you once, for the record." He 
stopped walking and faced her. 
"Will you marry mc?" 

"Oh, Tony!" The name explod- 
ed from her in fear and desire 
both. "Tony, how can we? I 
thought — for just a little while 
after I told you about me, I thought 
perhaps we could, that life "could 
be the way it is for other people. 
But now this. How can we?" 

"What are you afraid of?" 

"Afraid? I'm afraid of our chil- 
dren, afraid of this planet! I was 
never afraid before, I was hurt and 
bewildered when I knew too much 
about people, but — Tony, don't you 
3 To have a baby like Polly's, 
to have it grow up a stranger, an 
alien creature, to have it leave me 
and go to its — its own people . , ," 

HE TOOK her hand and began 
walking again, searching for 
the words he needed. 

"Ansie," he began, "I think we 
will be married. If you want 'it as 
much as I do, we surely will be. 
And we'll have children. And more 
than that, the hope of all the race 
will lie in our children, Anna. Ours 
and the children of the other peo- 
ple here. And the children of the 
Brownies. Don't forget that. 

"They look different. They even 
think differently, and nobody 
knows more about that than you. 
But they're as human as we are. 
Maybe more so. 



' "We've made a beginning here 
at Sun Lake tonight. We've cut 
the big knot, the knot that kept us 
tied to Earth. Brownies helped us 
do that, and maybe they can help 
us lick this planet in all the ways 
that still remain. Maybe they can 
help us i ure the next Joan Rad- 
cliff. Maybe they can keep us from 
going blind when the protective 
shots from Earth stop coming 
through. 

"But maybe they can't." 

"Ansie, if our children should 
be Brownies, we'd not only have 
to face it, accept it without fear — 
we'd have to be glad. Brownies arc 
the children of Mars, natural hu- 
man children of Mars. We don't 
know yet whether we can live here; 
but we know they can. 

"They're gentle. They're honest 
and decent and rational. They trust 
each other, not because of blind 
loves and precedents, as wc do, but 
because they know each other as 
Earth humans never can. If blind 
hates and precedents end life on 
Earth, Ansae, we can go on at Sun 
Lake. And we can go on that much 
better for knowing that even our 
failure, if we fail, won't be the 
end." 

He stopped at her door and 
looked down at her, searching for 
the understanding that had to be 
there. If Anna failed, what other 
woman would comprehend ? 

"I'll ask you this time," she said 
soberly. "Tony, will you marry 
me? " — CYRIL JUDD 



MARS CHILD 



115 




IS ANOTHER WORLD WATCH- 
ING? by Gerald Heard. Harper 
& Bros., New York, 1951. 183 
pages, $2.75. 

IT IS unfortunate that this book 
had to appear after Frank 
Scully's volume on flying sauc- 
ers. Being a much more rational, 
i< ntific and generally persuash 

job, it might have captured a reas- 
oning audience which may not be so 
•alienated that the very mention of 
the subject will make them susped 
another hoax — and perhaps pass up 
an extremely well-reasoned piece of 
scientific speculation. 

Gerald Heard, better known to 

science fiction readers as H. I\ 
Heard, makes a case for an extra- 



terrestrial origin of the mysterious 
disks, and for their being manned 
by a highly intelligent form of in- 
sect life (he argues for bees or 
beelike creatures) but in a quiet, 
logical way, without hysterical out- 
bursts against military conspiracies 
that are keeping the "truth" from 
us. There will be various points at 
which some readers may call a 
mental halt and say that sometimes 
assumption outraces sweet reason- 
ableness, of course. The equating 
of Lodge spiritualism with scien- 
tific speculation is one example. 
Another is when Heard posits thai 
since no one has ever seen a flying 
disk land or take off, therefore 
none have ever landed or taken off. 
He also develops from no evidence 



116 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



the notion that atom bombings 
might, through interrelations be- 
tween hard radiations from Earth 
and the spots on the Sun, actually 
cause our Cepheid to go nova. 

However, you don't have to swal- 
low the whole book; enough of it 
is digestible to make a good mental 
meal. 

i 

DREADFUL SANCTUARY, by 

Eric Frank Russell. Fantasy 
Press, Reading. Pa., 1951. 276 
pages, $2.75. 

THIS oddly double-edged novcL 
offers a sort of reverse twist on 
its author's previous Sinister Bar- 
rier, and at the same time fits itself 
into the growing canon of first- 
trip-to-the-Moon tales. 

Basically, the story has to do 
with the increasingly monotonous 
failure, by explosion, of a long 
series of experimental Moon rock- 
ets (all but one, a Russian model, 
unmanned), usually just when they 
are approaching the Lunar surface. 
The search for the causes of these 
catastrophes becomes the full-time 
occupation of John J. Armstrong, 
a bear of a man who has a hand 
in the building of the current 
American xockct. His detective 
work leads him down strange and 
dangerous ways — ways which in 
the end reveal an anti-Moon-Mars- 
Vcnus secret society on Earth that 
strikingly combines an inside-out 
version of the "we-are-property" 
motif of the author's earlier novel, 



and an uncomfortably realistic atti- 
tude toward us ordinary folks. 

Half brilliant imaginative sci- 
ence-adventure-detective story, half 
bitter and biting social satire, 
Dread jul Sanctuary is one of the 
more adult additions to the grow- 
ing shelf of reprints from the 
Fabulous Forties of Astounding 
Science Fiction. 

THE NATURE OF THE UNI- 
VERSE, by Fred Hoyle. Harper 
& Bros., New York, 1951. 142 
pages, $2.50. 

THIS easy popularization of the 
New Cosmology, as the latest 
British theories about the Universe 
are called, contains some rather 
astonishing new notions, which deal 
primarily with the refurbishing and 

patching-up of the older Jeans-Ed - 
dington theory about the Expand- 
ing Universe. The book's material 
on the Solar System and the Gal- 
axy will be largely, though far from 
entirely, old stuff to the science 
fiction reader. 

Some of the notions that come 
Jater are pretty fantastic and won- 
derful. They can be criticized large- 
ly on the ground that the author 
puts them forward with too much 
of an air of "This is THE Ulti- 
mate Truth; all that has gone be- 
fore is Error." 

The ideas arc worth thinking 
about all the same. Most cxcitii 
of all is Hoylc's formulation of the 
notion of continuous creation. It 



• • • • • SHELF 



117 



may be said that the whole new 
British cosmology that Hoyle is de- 
fending is based on this at- first- 
sight ridiculous and anti-scientific 
idea. It is claimed lhat once every 

hour, more or less, approximately 

one atom is created out of nothing 
in an area of space roughly equal 
to that of a middle-sized skyscraper. 
Out of nothing! 

Hoyle claims that while this is a 
new scientific hypothesis, it is not a 
"new" or "revolutionary" assump- 
tion. It simply replaces a previous 
assumption, even less likely or love- 
ly, that "the whole of Che matter in 
the Universe was created in one big 

bang at a particular time in the re- 
mote' past/' And it cannot be itself 
replaced by the idea that material 

never was created at all but always 
has been (one of the very oldest 
scientific assumptions) because, as 
Hoyle brilliantly demonstrates, were 
this the case there would be no 
hydrogen left in the Universe — and 
consequently no solar phoenix, no 
life, no ns, 

Obviously, if only for the intel- 
lectual-imaginative jag you can get 
out of the latter chapters of this 
little book, it is worth reading! 

ADVENTURES IN TOMOR- 
ROW, edited by K en a I el I Foster 
Crossen . Greenberg Publishers , 

New York, 1951. 278 pages, 
$3.50. 

THIS is the first of the spring 
spate of science fiction anthol- 



ogies, a form of literature that is 
becoming more of a breed than a 
branch — like rabbits or hamsters. 
This one, unfortunately, shows 

signs of inbreeding. 

The fifteen stories are divided 
into four sections. 

Section One: M Atomic Age." 
Four stories, in three of which hu- 
manity is practically wiped out, and 
in the fourth it certainly is on the 
way toward extinction — thus leav- 
ing no one to go ahead and perform 
the derring-do described in the rest 
of the book. Incidentally, Walter 
Van Tilburg Clark's The Portable 
Phonograph, the fourth story men- 
, tioned, is surely one of the master- 
pieces of mood science fiction; a 

great story. -Compare it with Ray 

Bradbury's There Will Come Soft 
Rains r chosen from The Martian 
Chronicles : equally splendid, but 
diametrically opposite in method . . . 
The other two stories in the atomic 
section are by Ward Moore and 
Forrest Ackerman. 

Section Two: "Galactic Age." 
Van Vogt's second-rate Automaton; 
the editor's old-type interstellar tale 
of imperialists- versus-downtroddeu 
called Restricted Clientele^ with the 
daring Liberal who rescues man 
from the slavery imposed by the 
Mean Old Exploiters; C. L. Moore's 
old (1933) and ghoulish-squirmy- 
cum-raw-sexy Shamblean — histori- 
cally interesting but certainly some- 
thing Mrs. Kuttner cannot be too 
proud of today; and Isaac Asimov's 
somewhat embarrassing Christmas 



118 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



on Ganymede (1942) which was 
funny only in intent. 

Section Three: "Stellar Age," up 
to 10,000 A.D. Ted Sturgeon's 
well-done but minor Memory, very 
much a gadget story of a sort I did 
not know T. S. ever wrote; Sam 
Merwin's Exiled from Earth, dug 
from his earliest literary strata; 
Leigh Brack ett's Retreat to the 
Stars y one of those Adam and Eve 
re-creations that I find unconvincing 
whenever they turn up; and Henry 
Kutner's funny but drastically un- 
important and non-scicncc fiction 
Voice of the Lobster. 

Section Four: "Delphic Age" 
(whatever that is). Up to 1,000,000 
years in the future. A Robert Arthur 
item called Evolutions End, which 
read that way; Tony Boucher's 
Transfer Point from GALAXY last 
fall — a darn nice time story which 
actually has little business in a sec- 
tion of the distant future (except 
that it does describe one sort of 
world's end); and Bruce Elliott's 
silly and thoroughly unconvincing 
The Devil Was Sick. 

Of this collection only the Brad- 
bury, Clark, Van Vogt, Sturgeon 
and Boucher (and possibly the C. L. 
Moore) are really worthy of preser- 
vation, on my scale of values. Not, 
in my opinion, enough to rate the 
price of three pounds of sirloin. 

MEN OF OTHER PLANETS, 

by Kenneth Hener. Pellegrini & 
Cudahy, New York, 1951- 165 
pages, $3.00. 



w 



"TTTE KNOW so little about 

the planets, having never 
visited them, that a wonderful 
variety of things is possible." 

This is the essence of the philoso- 
phy, the science — and the "literary 
style" — of this curious volume by a 
lecturer at the Hayden Planetarium 
in New York. 

It is too bad that so much useful 
though elementary information is 
presented in so awkward a style and 
with such disregard for the ele- 
mentary rules of scientific evidence. 

Many science fiction addicts, in- 
cluding myself, are constantly 
shocked by the narrow-mindedness 
of the conventional astro-physicist 
or biologist, neither of whom can 
imagine any other form of life than 
one based on the carbon-water cycle. 
Heuer had here a really fine oppor- 
tunity to map out the prospects for 
life of other possible sorts, based 
on certain elementary facts from 
chemistry and physics. Instead, he 
has largely ignored this hard but 
honest route, and has, with the aid 
of his fantastic analogies, described 
life- types on other worlds as visual- 
ized by his own somewhat jejune 
imagination, as day-dreamed by 
pre-scientific philosophers and as- 
trologers, or by early scientific 
"astronomers." 

The result is a book which gives 
m practically nothing that is sound- 
ly based on scientific guesswork, 
and a great deal that is plain non- 
sense, 

5ROFF CONKON 



• • • * • SHELF 



119 




120 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



s 




All she wanted was a 
mate and she had the 
gumption to go out and hunt 
one down. But that meant poach- 
ing in a strictly forbidden territory! 





Illustrated by DON SIBLEY 

By MILTON LESSER 



THE best that could be said 
for Matilda Penshaws was 
that she was something of a 
paradox. She was thirty-three years 
old, certainly not aged when you 
consider the fact that the female 
life expectancy is now up in the 
sixties, but the lines were beginning 
to etch their permanent paths across 
her face and now she needed cer- 
tain remedial undergarments at 
which she would have scoffed ten 

or even five years ago. Matilda was 
also looking for a husband. 

This, in itself, was not unusual — 
but Matilda was so completely 
wrapped up in the romantic fallacy 
of her day that she sought a prince 
charming, a faithful Don Juan, a 
man who had been everywhere and 

tasted of every worldly pleasure 
and who now wanted to sit on a 



to 



porch and talk about it all 

Matilda. 

The fact that in all probability 
such a man did not exist disturbed 
Matilda not in the least. She had 
been known to say that there are 
over a billion men in the world, a 
goodly percentage of whom are 
eligible bachelors, and that the right 
one would come along simply be- 
cause she had been waiting for him. 

Matilda, you see, had patience. 

She also had a fetish. Matilda 
had received her A.B. from ex- 
clusive Ursula Johns College and 
Radcliff had yielded her Masters 
degree, yet Matilda was an avid fol- 
lower of the pen pal columns. She 
would read them carefully and then 
read them again, looking for the 

masculine names which, through a 
system known only to Matilda, had 



PEN PAL 



121 



an affinity to her own. To the gen- 
tlemen upon whom these names 
were affixed, Matilda would w % rite, 
and she often told her mother, the 
widow Penshaws, that it was in this 
way she would find her husband. 
The widow Penshaws impatiently 
told her to go out and get dates. 

- 

THAT particular night, Matilda 
pulled her battered old sedan 
into the garage and walked up the 
walk to the porch. The widow Pen- 
shaws was rocking on the glider 
and Matilda said hello. 

The first thing the widow Pen- 
shaws did was to take Matilda's 
left hand in her own and examine 
the next-to-the-last finger. 

"I thought so," she said. "I knew 
this -was coming when I saw that 
look in your eye at dinner. Where 
is Herman's engagement ring?" 

Matilda smiled. "It wouldn't 
have worked out, Ma. He was too 
darned stuffy. I gave him his ring 
and said thanks anyway and he 
smiled politely and said he wished 
I had told him sooner because his 
fifteenth college reunion was this 
weekend and he had already turned 
down the invitation/' 

The widow Penshaws nodded re- 
gretfully- "That was thoughtful of 
Herman to hide his feelings." 

"Hogwash!" said her daughter. 
"He has no true feelings. He's 
sorry that he had to miss his college 
reunion. That's all he has to hide. 
A stuffy Victorian prude and even 
less of a man than the others." 



"But, Matilda, that's your fifth 
broken engagement in three years. 
It ain't that you ain't popular, but 
you just don't want to cooperate. 
You don't jail in love, Matilda — no 
one does. Love osmoses into you 
slowly, without you even knowing, 
and it keeps growing all the time." 

Matilda admired her mother's use 
of the word osmosis, but she found 
nothing which was not objection- 
able about being unaware of the 
impact of love. She said good -night 
and went upstairs, climbed out of 
her light summer dress and took a 
•cold shower. 

She began to hum to herself. She 
had not yet seen the pen pal section 
of the current Literary Review, and 
because the subject matter of that 
magazine was somewhat highbrow 
and cosmopolitan, she could expect 
a gratifying selection of pen pals. 

She shut off the shower, brushed 
her teeth, gargled, patted herself 
dry with a towel, and jumped into 
bed, careful to lock the door of her 
bedroom. She dared not let the 
widow Penshaws know that she 
slept in the nude; the widow Pen- 
shaws would object to a girl sleep- 
ing in the nude, even if the nearest 
neighbor was three hundred yards 
away. 

Matilda switched her bed lamp 
on and dabbed some citrinella on 
each ear lobe and a little droplet on 
her chin (how she hated insects!). 
Then she propped up her pillows — ■ 
two pillows partially stopped her 
post-nasal drip; and took the latest 



122 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



issue of the Literary Review off the 

night table. 

She flipped through the pages 
and came to personals. Someone in 
Nebraska wanted to trade match 
books; someone in New York 
needed a midwesLern pen pal, but it 
was a woman; an elderly man inter- 
ested in ornithology wanted a young 
chick correspondent interested in 

the same subject; a young, person- 
able man wanted an editorial posi- 
tion because he thought he had 
something to offer the editorial 
world; and — 

MATILDA read the next one 
twice. Then she held it close 
to the light and read it again. The 
Literary Review was one of the few 
magazines which printed the name 
of the advertiser rather than a box 

number, and Matilda even liked 
the sound of the name. But mostly, 
she had to admit to herself, it was 
the flavor of the wording. This very 
well could be //. Or. that is, him. 

Intelligent, somewhat egotistical 

male who's really been around, 
whose universal experience can 
make the average cosmopolite 
look like a provincial hick, is in 
need of several female corre- 
spondents : must be intelligent, 
have gumption, be capable of 
listening to male who has a lot 
to say and wants to say it. All 
others need not apply. Wonder- 
ful opportunity cultural experi- 
ence . . . Haron Gorka, Cedar 
Falls, HI. 



The man was egotistical, all 
right; Matilda could see that. But 
she had never minded an egotistical 
man, at least not when he had 
something about which he had a 
genuine reason to be egotistical. 
The man sounded as though he 
would have reason indeed. He only 
wanted the best because he was the 
best. Like calls to like. 

The name — Haron Gorka: its 
oddness was somehow beautiful to 
Matilda. Haron Gorka — the nation- 
ality could be anything. And that 
was it. He had no nationality for all 
intents and purposes; he was an in- 
ternational man, a figure among 
figures, a pa] agon ... 

Matilda sighed happily as she put 
out the light. The moon shone in 
through the window brightly, and 
at such times Matilda generally 

would get up, go to the cupboard, 
pull out a towel, take two hairpins 
from her powder drawer, pin the 
towel to the screen of her window, 
and hence keep the disturbing 
moonlight from her eyes. But this 
time it did not disturb her, and she 
would let it shine. Cedar Falls was 
a small town not fifty miles from 
her home, and she'd get there a 
hop, skip, and jump ahead of her 
competitors, simply by arriving in 
person instead of "writing a letter. 
Matilda was not yet that far gone 
in years or appearance. Dressed 
properly, she could hope to make a 
favorable impression in person, and 

she felt it was important to beat the 
influx of mail to Cedar Falls. 



PEN PAL 



123 



MATILDA got out of bed at 
seven, tiptoed into the bath- 
room, showered with a merest wary 
trickle of water, tiptoed back into 
her bedroom, dressed in her very 
best cotton over the finest of up- 
lifting and figure-moulding under- 
things, made sure her stocking 
seams were perfectly straight, 
brushed her suede shoes, admired 
herself in the mirror, read the ad 
again, wished for a moment she 
were a bit younger, and tiptoed 
downstairs. 

The widow Penshaws met her at 
the bottom of the stairwell. 

"Mother/' gasped Matilda. Ma- 
tilda always gasped when she saw 
something unexpected. "What on 
earth are you doing up?" 

The widow Penshaws smiled 
somewhat toothlessly, having neg- 
lected to put in both her uppers and 
lowers this early in the morning. 
"I'm fixing breakfast, of course . . ." 

Then the widow Penshaws told 
Matilda that she could never hope 
to sneak about the house without 
her mother knowing about it, and 
that even if she were going out in 
response to one of those foolish 
ads in the magazines, she would 
still need a good breakfast to start 
with like only mother could cook. 
Matilda moodily thanked the widow 

Penshaws. 

DRIVING the fifty miles to 
Cedar Falls in a little less than 
an hour, Matilda hummed Men- 
delsohn's Wedding March all the 



way. It was her favorite piece of 
music. Once, she told herself: Ma- 
tilda Penshaws, you are being pre- 
mature about the whole thing. But 
she laughed and thought that if she 
was, she was, and, meanwhile, she 
could only get to Cedar Falls and 

find out. 

And so she got there. 

The man in the wire cage at the 
Cedar Falls post office was a stereo- 
type. Matilda always liked to think 
in terms of stereotypes. This man 
was small, roundish, florid of face, 
with a pair of eyeglasses which 
hung too far down on his nose. 
Matilda knew he would peer over 
his glasses and answer questions 
grudgingly. 

"Hello/ 1 said Matilda. 

The stereotype grunted and 
peered at her over his glasses. Ma- 
tilda asked him where she could 
find Haron Gorka. 

"What?" 

"I said, where can I find Haron 
Gorka?" 

"Is that in the United States?" 

"It's not a that; it's a he. Where 
can I find him? Where does he 
live? What's the quickest way to 
get there?" 

The stereotype pushed up his 
glasses and looked at her squarely. 
""Now take it easy, ma'am. First 
place, I don't know any Haron 
Gorka—" 

Matilda kept the alarm from 
creeping into her voice. She mut- 
tered an oh under her breath and 
took out the ad. This she showed 



124 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



to the stereotype, and he scratched 
his bald head. Then he told Ma- 
tilda almost happily that he was 
sorry he couldn't help her. He 
grudgingly suggested that if it 
really were important, she might 
check with the police. 

Matilda did, only they didn't 
iow any Haron Gorka, either. It 
turned out that no one did: Matilda 
tried the general store, the fire de- 
partment, the city hall, the high 
school, all three Cedar Falls gas 
Stations, the livery stable, and half 
a dozen private dwellings at ran- 
dom. As far as the gentry of Cedar 
Falls was concerned, Haron Gorka 
did not exist. 

Matilda felt bad, but she had no 
intention of returning home this 
early. If she could not find Haron 
Gorka, that was one tiling; but she 

knew that she'd rather not return 
home and face the widow Pen- 
shaws, at least not for a while yet. 
The widow Penshaws meant well, 
but she liked to analyze other peo- 
ple's mistakes, especially Matilda's. 

Accordingly, Matilda trudged 
wearily toward Cedar Falls' small 
and unimposing library. She could 
release some of her pent-up aggres- 
sion by browsing through the dusty 
stacks. 

This she did, but it was unre- 
warding. Cedar Falls had what 
might be called a microscopic li- 
brary, and Matilda thought that if 
this small building were filled with 
microfilm rather than books, the 
library still would be lacking. Hence 



she retraced her steps and nodded 
to the old librarian as she passed, 

THEN Matilda frowned. Twenty 
years from now, this could be 
Matilda Penshaws -complete with 
plain gray dress, rimless spectacles, 
gray hair, suspicious eyes, and a 
broomstick figure . . . 

On the other hand — why not? 
Why couldn't the librarian help 
her? Why hadn't she thought of it 
before? Certainly a man as well- 
educated as Haron Gorka would 
be an avid reader, and unless lie 
had a permanent residence here in 
Cedar Falls, one couldn't expect 
that he'd have his own library with 
him. This being the case, a third- 
rate collection of books was far bet- 
ter than no collection at all, and 

perhaps the librarian would know 
Mr. Haron Gorka. 

Matilda cleared her throat. "Par- 
don me," she began. "I'm looking 
for—" 

"Haron Gorka/' The librarian 
nodded. 

How on earth did you know?" 
That's easy. You're the sixth 
young woman who came here in- 
quiring about that man today. Six 
of you — five others in the morn- 
ing, and now you in the afternoon. 
I never did trust this Mr. 
Gorka . . ." 

Matilda jumped as if she had 
been struck strategically from the 
rear. "You know him? You know 
Haron Gorka?" 

"Certainly. Of course I know 



* f 



«< j 



PEN PAL 



125 



him. He's our steadiest reader here 
at the library. Not a' week goes by 
that he doesn't take out three, four 
books. Scholarly gentleman, but not 
without charm. If I were twenty 
years younger — " 

Matilda thought a little flattery 
might be effective. "Only ten," .she 
assured the librarian. "Ten yea is 
would be more than sufficient, I'm 

sure." 

"Arc you? Well. Well, well." 
The librarian did something with 
the back of her hair, but it looked 
the same as before. "Maybe you're 
right. Maybe you're right at that." 
Then she sighed. "But I guess a 

miss is as good as a mile/ 1 

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean anyone would like to 
correspond with Haron Gorka. Or 
to know him well. To be consu 

ered his friend. Haron Gorka . . ." 

The librarian seemed about to 
soar off into the air someplace, and 
if five women had been here first, 
Matilda was now definitely in a 
hurry. 

"Urn, where can I find Mr, 
Gorka?' 

'Tm not supposed to do this, you 
know. We're not permitted to give 
the addresses of any of our people. 
Against regulations, my dear." 

. "What about the other five 
women ?" 

"They convinced me that I ought 
to give them his address." 

Matilda reached into her pocket- 
book and withdrew a five dollar 
bill. "Was this the way?" she de- 



manded. Matilda was not very good 
at this sort of thing. 

The librarian shook her head. 

Matilda nodded shrewdly and 
added a twin brother to the bill in 
her hand. "Then is this better?" 

"That's worse. I wouldn't take 
your money — " 

"Sorry. What then?" 

"If I cant enjoy an association 
with 1 laron Gorka directly, I still 
could get the vicarious pleasure of 
your contact with him. Report to 
me faithfully and you'll get his 
addr That's what the other five 

will do, and with half a dozen of 
you, I'll get an overall picture. Each 
one of you will tell mc about Haron 
Gorka, sparing no details. You each 
have a distinct personality, of 
course, and it will color each pic- 
ture considerably. But with six of 

you reporting, I should receive my 
share of vicarious enjoyment. Is it 
- — ah — a deal?" 

Matilda assured her that it was, 
and, breathlessly, she wrote down 
the address. She thanked the li- 
brarian and then she went out to 
her car, whistling to herself. 

HARON GORKA lived in what 
could have been an agrarian 
estate, except that the land no 
longer was being tilled. The house 
itself had fallen to ruin. This sur- 
prised Matilda, but she did not let 
it keep her spirits in check. Haron 
Gorka, the man, was what counted, 
and the librarian's account of him 
certainly had been glowing enough. 



126 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



Perhaps he was too busy with his 
cultural* pursuits to pay any real 
attention to his dwelling. That was 
it, of course: the conspicuous show 
of wealth or personal industry 
meant nothing at all to Haron 
Gorka. Matilda liked him all the 
more for it. 

There were five cars parked in 
the long driveway, and now Ma- 
tilda's made the sixth. In spite of 
herself, she smiled. She had not 
been the only one with the idea to 
visit Haron Gorka in person. With 
half a dozen of them there, the lag- 
gards who resorted to posting let- 
ters would be left far behind. Ma- 
tilda congratulated herself for what 
she thought had been her ingenuity, 
and which now turned out to be 
something which she had in com- 
mon with five other women. You 
live and learn, thought Matilda. 
And then, quite annoyedly, she be- 
rated herself for not having been 
the first. Perhaps the other five all 
were satisfactory; perhaps she 
wouldn't be needed; perhaps she 
was too late , . . 

AS it turned out, she wasn't. Not 
only that, she was welcomed 
with open arms. Not by Haron 
Gorka; that she really might have 
liked. Instead, someone she could 
only regard as a menial met her, 
and when he asked had she come in 
response to the advertisement, she 
nodded eagerly. He told her that 
was fine and he ushered her straight 
into a room which evidently was to 



be her living quarters. It contained 
a small undersized bed, a table, and 
a chair, and, near a little slot in the 
wall, there was a button. 

"You want any food or drink," 
the servant told her, "and you just 
press fhat button. The results will 
surprise you." 

"What about Mr. Gorka?" 

"When he wants you, he will 
send for you. Meanwhile, make 
yourself to home, lady, and I will 
tell him you are here." 

A little doubtful now, Matilda 
thanked him and watched him 
leave. He closed the door softly 
behind his retreating feet, but Ma- 
tilda's cars had not missed the 
ominous click. She ran to the door 
and tried to open it, but it would 
not budge. It was locked — from the 
outside. 

It must be said to Matilda's 
favor that she sobbed only once. 
After that she realized that what 
is done is done and here, past- 
thirty, she wasn't going to be girl- 
ishly timid about it. Besides, it was 
not her fault if, in' his unconcern, 
Haron Gorka had unwittingly hired 
a neurotic servant. 

For a time Matilda paced back 
and forth in her room, and of what 
was going on outside she could hear 
nothing. In that case, she would 
pretend that there was nothing out- 
side the little room, and presently 
she lay down on the bed to take a 
nap. This didn't last long, however: 
she had a nightmare in which 
Haron Gorka appeared as a giant 



PEN PAL 



127 



with two heads, but, upon awaking 
with a start, she immediately 
ascribed that to her overwrought 

nerves. 

At that point she remembered 
what the servant had said about 
food and she thought at ohce of 
the supreme justice she could do to 

a juicy beefsteak. Well, ntaybe they 
didn't have & beefsteak. In that case; 

she would take what they had, and, 

accordingly, she walked to the lit- 
tle slot in the wall and pressed the 
button. 

She heard the whir of machinery: 
A moment later there was a soft 
sliding sound; Through the slot 
first came a delicious aroma, fol- 
lowed almost instantly by a tray. On 
the tray were a bowl of turtle soup, 
mashed potatoes, green peas, bread, 
a Strange cocktail, root-beer, a par- 
fait — and a thick tenderloin siz- 
zling in hot butter sauce. 

Matilda gasped once and felt 
about to g.i$p again — but by then 
her salivary glands were working 
overtime, and she ate her meal. 
The fact that it was precisely what 
she would have wanted could, of 
course, be attributed to coincidence, 
and the further fact that everything 
was extremely palatable made her 
forget all about Haron Gorka's neu- 
rotic servant 

When she finished her meal a 
pleasant lethargy possessed her, and 
in a little while Matilda was asleep 
again. This time she did not dream 
at all. It was a deep sleep and a 
restful one, and when she awoke it 



«« 



«« 



was with the wonderful feeling that 
everything was all right. 

Tllli feeling did not last long. 
Standing over her was Haron 
Gorka's servant, and he said, "Mr. 
Gorka will see you now." 
Now?" 

Now. That's what you're here 
for, isn't it?" 

He had a point there, but Ma- 
tilda hardly even had time to fix 
her hair. She told the servant so. 

"Miss," he replied, "I assure you 
it will not matter in the least to 
Haron Gorka. You are here and 
he is ready to see you and that is 
all that matters." 

"You sure?" Matilda wanted to 
take no chances. 

"Yes. Come." 

She followed him out of the lit- 
tle room and across what should 
have been a spacious dining area, 
except that everything seemed cov- 
ered with dust. Of the other women 
Matilda could see nothing, and she 
suddenly realized that each of them 
probably had a cubicle of a room 
like her own, and that each in her 
turn had already had her first visit 
with Haron Gorka. Well,, then, she 
must see to it that she impressed 
him better than did all the rest, and, 
later, when she returned to tell the 
old librarian of her adventures, she 
could perhaps draw her out and 
compare notes. 

She would not admit even to her- 
self that she was disappointed with 
Haron Gorka. It was not that he 



128 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



was homely and unimpressive; it 
was just that he was so or dinar y- 
looking. She almost would have 
preferred the monster of her 
dreams. 

HE wore a white linen suit and 
he Jiad mousy hair, drab eyes, 
an almost-Roman nose, a petulant 
mouth with the slight arch of the 
egotist at each corner. 

He said, "Greetings. You have 



»» 



come — 

"In response 



How 



to your ad. 
do you do, Mr. Gorka?" 

She hoped she wasn't being too 
formal. But, then, there was no 
sense in assuming that he would 
like informality. She could only 
wait and see and adjust her own ac- 
tions to suit him. Meanwhile, it 
would be best to keep on the mid- 
dle of the road. 

"I am fine. Are you ready?" 

"Ready ?" 

"Certainly. You came in response 
to my ad. You want to hear me 
talk, do you not?" 

"I— do." Matilda had had vi- 
sions of her prince charming sit- 
ting back and relaxing with her, 
telling her of the many things he 
had done and seen. But first she 
certainly would have liked to get 
to know the man. Well, Haron 
Gorka obviously had more experi- 
ence alon# these lines than she did. 
He waited, however, as if wonder- 
ing what to say, and Matilda, ac- 
customed to social chatter, gave 
him a gambit. 



"I must admit I was surprised 
when I got exactly what I wanted 
for dinner," she told him brightly. 

"Eh? What say? Oh, yes, natu- 
rally. A combination of telepathy 
and teleportation. The synthetic 
cookery is attuned to your mind 
when you press the buzzer, and 
the strength of your psychic im- 
pulses determines how closely the 
meal will adjust to your desires. 
The fact that the adjustment here 
was near perfect is commendable. It 
means either that you have a high 
psi-quotient, or that you were very 
hungry." 

"Yes," said Matilda vaguely. 
Perhaps it might be better, after 
all, if Haron Gorka were to talk to 
her as he saw fit. 

"Ready?" 

"Uh— ready." 

"Well?" 

"Well, what, Mr. Gorka?" 

"What would you like me to 
talk about?" 

"Oh, anything." 

"Please. As the ad read, my uni- 
versal experience — is universal. Lit- 
erally. You'll have to be more spe- 
cific." 

"Well, why don't you tell me 
about some of your far travels? Un- 
fortunately, while I've done a lot 
of reading, I haven't been to all* 
the places I would have liked — '" 

"Good enough. You know, of 
course, how frigid Deneb VII is?" 

Matilda said, "Beg pardon?" 

"Well, there was the time our 
crew — before I had retired, of 



PEN PAL 



129 




course — made a crash landing there. 
We could survive in the vac-suits, 
of course, but the thlomnis were 
after us almost at once. They go 
mad over plastic. They will eat ab- 
solutely any sort of plastic. Our 
vac-suits — M 

" — were made of plastic," Ma- 
tilda suggested. She did not under- 
stand a thing he was talking about, 

but she felt she had better act 
bright. 

"No, no. Must you interrupt ? 
The air-hose and the water feed, 
these were plastic. Not the rest of 
die suit. The point is that half of 
us were destroyed before the rescue 
ship could come, and the remainder 
were near death. I owe my life to 
the mimicry of a fiaak from Capclla 
III. It assumed the properties of 
plastic and led the thlomols a merry 
chase across the frozen surface of 
D VII. You travel in the Deneb 
system now and Interstellar Ordi- 



130 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 




nance makes it mandatory to carry 
fiaaks with you. Excellent idea, 
really excellent." 

ALMOST at once, Matilda's edu- 
cational background should 
have told her that Haron Gorka 
was mouthing gibberish. But on the 
other hand she wanted to believe in 
him and the result was that it took 
until now for her to realize it. 

"Stop making fun of me/' she 
said. 

"So, naturally, you'll see flaaks 
all over that system — " 

"Stop!" 

"What's that? Making fun of 
you?" Haron Gorka's voice had 
been so eager as he spoke, high- 
pitched, almost like a child's, and 
now he seemed disappointed. He 
smiled, but it v , a sad smile, a 
smile of resignation, and he said, 
"Very well. I'm wrong again. You 
are the sixth, and you're no better 



than the other five. Perhaps you are 
even more outspoken. When you 
see my wife, tell her to come back. 
Again she is right and I am 
wrong ..." 

Haron Gorka turned his back. 

Matilda could do nothing but 
leave the room, walk back through 
the house, go outside and get into 
her car. She noticed not without 
surprise that the other five cars 
were now gone. She was the last of 
Haron Gorka's guests to depart. 

As she shifted into reverse and 
pulled out of the driveway, she saw 
the servant leaving, too. Fur down 
the road, he was walking slowly. 
Then Huron Gorka had severed 
that relationship, too, and now he 
was all alone. 

As site drove back to town, the 
disappointment melted slowly away. 
There were, of course, two altera 
lives. Either Haron Gorka was an 
eccentric who enjoyed this sort of 



PEN PAL 



131 



outlandish tomfoolery, or else he 
was plainly insane. She could still 
picture him ranting on aimlessly 
to no one in particular about places 
which had no existence outside of 
his mind, his voice high-pitched and 
eager. 

IT WAS not until she had passed 
the small library building that 
she remembered what she had 
promised the librarian. In her own 
way, the aging woman would be as 
disappointed as Matilda, but a 
promise was a promise, and Ma- 
tilda turned the car in a wide 
U-turn and parked it outside the 
library. 

The woman sat at her desk as 
Matilda had remembered her, gray, 
broom-stick figure, rigid. But now 
when she saw Matilda she perked 
up visibly. 

"Hello, my dear," she said. 



• •T T* * » 



"You're back a bit sooner than 
I expected. But, then, the other five 
have returned, too, and I imagine 
your story will be similar." 

"I don't know what they told 
you," Matilda said. "But this is 
what happened to me." 

She quickly then related every- 
thing which -had happened, com- 
pletely and in detail. She did this 
iirst because it was a promise, and 
second because she knew it would 
make her feel better. 

"So," she finished, "Karon 
Gorka is either extremely eccentric 
or insane- I'm sorry." 



"He's neither," the librarian con- 
tradicted. "Perhaps he is slightly 
eccentric by your standards, but real- 
ly, my dear, he is neither." 

"What do you mean?" 

"Did he leave a message for his 
wife?" 

"Why, yes. Yes, he did. But how 
did you know? Oh, I suppose he 
told the five." 

"No. He didn't. But you were the 
last and I thought he would give 
you a message for his wife — " 

Matilda didn't understand. She 
didn't understand at all, but she 
told the little librarian what the 
message was. "He wanted her to 
return," she said. 

The librarian nodded, a happy 
smile on her lips. "You wouldn't 
believe me if I told you something." 
What's that?" 
I am Mrs. Gorka." 

The librarian stood up and came 
around the desk. She opened a 
drawer and took out her hat and 

perched it jauntily atop her gray 
hair. "You see, my dear, Haron 
expects too much. He expects en- 
tirely too much." 

Matilda did not say a word. One 
madman a day would be quite 
enough for anybody, but here she 
found herself confronted with two. 

"We've been tripping for cen- 
turies, visiting every habitable star 
system from our home near Cano- 
pus. But Haron is too demanding. 
He says I am a finicky traveler, that 
he could do much better alone, the 
accommodations have to be just 



4* 1 



t% 



132 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



right for me, and so forth. When 

he loses his temper, he tries to con- 
vince me that any number of fe- 
males of the particular planet would 
be more than thrilled if they were 
given the opportunity just to Listen 
to him. 

"But he's wrong. It's a hard lif< 
for a woman. Someday — five thou- 
sand, ten thousand years from now 
— 1 will convince him. And then 
we will settle down on Canopus 
XIV .i ad cultivate tor gas. That 
would be so nice — " 
I ni sure. 
"Well, if Haron wants me back, 
then I have to go. Have x care, my 
dear. If you marry, choose a home- 
body. I've had the experience and 
you've seen my Haron for yourself/ 
And then the woman was gom 
Numbly, Matilda walked to th 
doorway and watched her angular 
figure disappear down the road. Of 
.11 the crazy things. ... 

Deneb and Capella and Canopus, 
these were stars. Add a number and 
you might have a planet revolving 
about ea< h star. Of all the insane — 
They were mad, all right, and 
now Matilda wondered if, actuall 
they were husband and wife. It 
could readily be; maybe the mad- 
ness was catching. Maybe if you 
thought too much about such things. 
Such travels, you could get that way. 
Of course, Herman represented th 
other extreme, and Herman was 
even worse in his own way — but 
hereafter Matilda would seek the 
happy medium. 



And. above all else, she had hail 
;h of her pen pal columns. 
They were, she realized, for kids. 

SHE ate dinner in Cedar Falls and 
then she went out to her car 
rain, preparing for the journey 
back home. The sun had set and 
it was a clear night, and overhead 
the great broad sweep of the Milky 
Way was a pale rainbow bridge in 
the .sky. 

Matilda paused. Off in the dis- 
tance there was a glow on the 
horizon, and that was the direction 
of Haron Gorka's place. 

The glow increased; soon it was 
a bright red pulse pounding on the 
horizon. It flickered. It flickered 
again, and finally it was gone. 

The stars were white and bril- 
liant in the clear country air. That 
was why Matilda liked the country 
better than the city, particularly on 
a clear summer night when you 
could sec the span of the Milky 
Way. 

Btit abruptly the stars ,ind the 
Milky Way were paled by the 
brightest shooting star Matilda had 
ever seen. It flashed suddenly and 
it remained in view for a full sec- 
ond, searing a bright orange path 
across the night sky. 

Matilda gasped and ran into her 
car. She started the gears and 
pressed the accelerator to the floor, 
keeping it there all the way home. 

It was the first time she had ever 
seen a shooting star going up. 

—MILTON LESSER 



PEN PAL 



133 




Appointment in Tomorrow 



BY FRITZ LEIBER 




134 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



Is it possible to have a world without moral values? 
Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also? 




Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER 



THE first angry rays of the 
sun — which, startlingly 

enough, still rose in t! 

east at 24 hour intervals — pierced 

the lacy tops of Atlantic combers 
and touched thousands of sleeping 
Americans with unconscious fear, 
because of their unpleasant similar- 
ity to the rays from World War 
Ill's atomic bombs. 

They turned to blood the witch - 
circle of rusty steel skeletons around 
Inferno in Manhattan. Without 
comment, they pointed a cosmic 
finger at the tarnished brass plaque 
commemorating the martyrdom of 
the Three Physicists after the drop- 
ping of the Hell Bomb. They ten- 
derly touched the rosy skin and 
strawberry bruises on the naked 
shoulders of a girl sleeping off a 
drunk on the furry and radiant 
heated floor of a nearby roof gar- 
den. They struck green magic from 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



135 



the glassy blot that was OKI Wash- 
ington. Twelve hours before, they 
had revealed things as eerily beau- 
tiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and 
Russia. They pinked ihe white walls 
of the Colonial dwelling of Mor- 
ion Opperly near the Institute for 
Advanced Studies; upstairs they 
slanted imp.n I i ally across the 
Pharoahlikc and open-eyed face of 
the elderly pin ist and the ugly, 
sleep-surly one of young Willard 
Farquar in the next room. And in 
nearby New Washington they made 

of the spire of the Thinkers' Foun- 
dation a blue and optimistic glory 
that outshone White House, Jr. 

It was Amen*, a approaching the 

nd of the Twentieth Century. 

America of juke-box burlesque and 
your local radiation hospital. Amer- 
ica of the mask- fad for women and 

Mystic Christianity. America of the 
off-thc-bo&om dress and the New 

Blue Laws. America oi the Endless 

War and the loyalty detector. Amer- 
ica of marvelous Maizie and the 
i non tl 1 1 y rocket to Mars. America 
of the Thinkers and (a few remem- 
bered) the Institute. "Knock on 
titanium/ - "Whadya do for black- 
outs/' "Please, lover, don't think 
when I'm around" America, as 
combat-shocked and crippled as the 
rest of the bomb-shattered planet. 
Not one impudent photon of the 
sunlight penetrated the triplc- 
paned, polarizing windows of Jorj 
Hclmuth's bedroom in the Think- 
er's Foundation, yet the clock in 
his brain awakened him to the 



minute, 5r almost. Switching off 

the Educational Sandman in the 
midst of the phrase, '\ . . applying 
tensor calculus to the nucleus/' he 

look a deep, even I ath and cast 

his mind to the limits of the world 
and his knowlei -. It was a some- 
what shadowy vision, but, he noted 
with impartial approval, definitely 

less shadowy than yesterday morn- 

Employing a rapid mental 
ng technique, he next cleared 
his memory chains of false associa- 
tions, including those acquired 
while asleep. These chores com- 
pleted, he held his linger on a bed- 
side button, which rotated the 
polarizing window panes until the 
room slowly filled with a muted 
daylight. Then, still flat on his 

bat he turned his head until lie 

ould look at the remarkably beau- 
tiful blonde girl asleep beside him. 

REMEMBERING last night, he 
felt a pang of exasperation, 
which he instantly quelled by tak- 
ing his mind to a higher and dis- 
passionate level from which he 
could look down on the girl and 
even himself as quaint, clumsy ani- 
mals. Still, he grumbled silently, 
Caddy might have had enough con- 
sideration to clear out before he 
awoke. He wondered if he should- 
n't have used his hypnotic control 
of the girl to smooth their relation - 
.ship last night, and for a moment 
the word that would send her into 
deep France trembled on the tip of 



136 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



his tongue. But no, that special 
power of his over her was reserved 
for far more important purposes. 

Pumping dynamic tension into 
his 20-year-old muscles and confi- 
dence into his 60-year-old mind, 
the 40-year-old Thinker rose from 
bed. No covers had to be thrown 
off; the nuclear ""heating unit made 
them unnecessary. He stepped into 
his clothing — the severe tunic, 
tights and sockassins of the modern 
business man. Next he glanced at 
the message tape beside his phone, 
washed down with ginger ale a 
vita-amino-enzyme tablet > and 
walked to the window. There, gaz- 
ing along the rows of newly plant- 
ed mutant oaks lining Decontam- 
ination Avenue, his smooth face 
broke into a smile. 

It had come to him, the next big 
move in the intricate game making 
up his life — and mankind's- Come 
to him during sleep, as so many of 
his best decisions did, because he 
regularly employed the time-saving 
technique of somno-thought, which 
could function at the same time as 
somno-learning. 

He set his who?-where? robot 
for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius 
Qui." While it worked, he dic- 
tated to his steno-robot the follow- 
ing brief message: 

Dear Fellow Scientist: 

A project is contemplated that will 
have a crucial bearing on man's future 
in deep space. Ample non-military 
Government funds are available. There 
was a time when professional men 
scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there 
was a time when the Thinkers perforce 



neglected the professional men. Now 
both times are past. May they never 
return! I would like to consult you 
this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, 
Thinkers' Foundation I. 

Jorj Helmuth 

Meanwhile the who?-where? had 
tossed out a dozen cards. He 
glanced through them, hesitated at 

the name "Willard Farquar," 
looked at the sleeping girl, then 
quickly tossed them all into the 
addresso-robot and plugged in the 
steno-robot. 

The buzz-light blinked green 
and he switched the phone to audio. 

"The President is waiting to see 
Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice 

announced. "He has the general 
staff with him." 

"Martian - peace to him," Jorj 
Helmuth said. "Tell him 111 be 
down in a few minutes." 

HUGE as a primitive nuclear 
reactor, the great electronic 
brain loomed above the knot of 
hush-voiced men. It almost filled a 
two-story room in the Thinkers' 
Foundation. Its front was an order- 
ly expanse of controls, indicators, 
telltales, and terminals, the upper 
ones reached by a chair on a boom. 
Although, as far as anyone knew, 
it could sense only the information 
and questions fed into it on a tape, 
the human visitors could not resist 
the impulse to talk in whispers and 
glance uneasily at the great cryptic 
cube. After all, it had lately taken 
to moving some of its own controls 
— the permissible ones — and could 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



137 



doubtless improvise a hearing ap- 
paratus if it wanted to. 

For this was the thinking ma- 
chine beside which the Marks and 
Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas 

.id Minervas and Miniirs were 
less than Morons. This was the ma- 
chine with a million times as many 
.synapses as the human brain, the 

machine that remembered by cut- 
ting delicate notches in the rims of 
molecules (instead of kindergarten 
paper-punching or the Coney Island 
.shimmying of columns of mercury). 
This was the machine that had 

iven instructions on 'building the 
List three-quarters of itself. This 
was the goal, perhaps, toward 
which fallible human reasoning and 
biased human judgment and feeble 
human ambition had evolved. 
This was the machine that really 

thought — a million-plus ! 

This was the machine that the 
timid cybernet icists and stuffy pro- 
fessional scientists had said could 
not be built. Yet this was the ma- 
chine that the Thinkers, with 
t haracteristic Yankee push, had 
built And nicknamed, with char- 
acteristic Yankee irreverence and 

.irl-fondness, "Maiicie." 

Gazing up at it, the President 
of the United States felt a chord 
plucked within him that hadn't 
been sounded for decades, the dark 

nd shivery organ chord of his 
Baptist childhood. Here, in a 
strange sense, although his reason 
rejected it, he felt hq stood face to 
face with the living God: infinitely 



stern with the sternness of reality, 
yet infinitely just. No tiniest error 
or wilful misstep could ever escape 
the scrutiny of this vast mentality. 
He shivered. 

THE grizzled general — there was 
also one who was gray — was 

thinking that this was a very odd 
link in the chain of command. 
Some shadowy and usually well- 
controlled memories from World 

War II faintly stirred his ire. Here 
he was giving orders to a being 
immeasurably more intelligent than 
himself. And always orders of the 
"Tell me how to kill that man" 
rather than the "Kill that man" 
sort. The distinction bothered him 
obscurely. It relieved him to know 
that Maizie had built-in controls 

which made her always the servant 

of humanity, or of humanity's 
right-minded leaders — even the 
Thinkers weren't certain which. 

The gray general was thinking 
uneasily, and, like the President, at 
a more turbid level, of the resem- 
blance between Papal infallibility 
and the dictates of the machine. 
Suddenly his bony wrists began to 
iremble. He asked himself; Was 
this the Second Coming? Mightn't 
an incarnation be in metal rather 
than flesh? 

The austere Secretary of State 

was remembering what he'd taken 
such pains to make everyone for- 
get: his youthful flirtation at Lake 
Success with Buddhism. Sitting be- 
fore his guru, his teacher, feeling 



138 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



the Occidental's awe at the wisdom 
of the East, or its pretense, he had 

felt a little like this. 

The burly Secretary of Space, 
who had come up through United 
Rockets, was thanking his stars that 
at any rate the professional scien- 
tists weren't responsible for this 
job. Like the grizzled general, he'd 
always felt suspicious of men who 
kept telling you how to do things, 
rather than doing them themselves. 
In World War III he'd had his fill 
of the professional physicists, with 
their eternal taint of a misty sort 
of radicalism and free-thinking. 
The Thinkers were better — more 
disciplined, more human. They'd 
called their brain-machine Maizie, 
which helped take the curse off her. 
Somewhat. 

THE President's Secretary, a 
paunchy veteran of party cau- 
cuses, was also glad that it was the 
Thinkers who had created the ma- 
chine, though he trembled at the 
power that it gave them over the 
Administration. Still, you could do 
business with the Thinkers. And 
nobody (not even -the Thinkers) 
could do business (that sort of 
business) with Maizie! 

Before that great square face 
with its thousands of tiny metal 

features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed 
at ease, busily entering on the tape 
the complex Questions of the Day 
that the high officials had handed 
him: logistics for the tEndless War 
in Pakistan, optimum size for next 



year's sugar-corn crop, current 
thought trends in average Soviet 
minds — profound questions, yet 
many of them phrased with sur- 
prising simplicity. For figures, tech- 
nical jargon, and laymanls language, 
were alike to Maizie; there was no 
need to translate into mathematical 
shorthand, as with the lesser brain- 
machines. 

The click of the taper went on 
until the Secretary of State had 
twice nervously iired a cigar et with 
his ultrasonic lighter and twice 
quickly put it away. No one spoke. 

Jorj looked up at the Secretary 
of Space. M Section Five, Question 
Four — whom would that come 
from?" 

The burly man frowned. "That 
would be the physics boys, Opper- 
ly's group. Is anything wrong?" 

Jorj did not answer. A bit later 
he quit taping and began to adjust 
controls, going up on the boom- 
chair to reach some of them. Even- 
tually he came down and touched 
a few more, then stood waiting. 

From the great cube came a pro- 
found, steady purring. Involuntar- 
ily the six officials backed off a bit. 
Somehow it was impossible for a 
man to get used to the sound of 
Maizie starting to think. 

JORJ turned, smiling. "And now, 
gentlemen, while we wait for 
Maizie to cerebrate, there should be 
just enough time for us to watch. 
the takeoff of the Mars rocket." 
He switched on a giant televi- 






APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



139 



sion screen. The others made a 
quarter turn, and there before them 
glowed the rich ochres and blues of 
a New Mexico sunrise and, in the 
middle distance, a silvery mighty 
spindle. 

Like the generals, the Secretary 

of Space suppressed a scowl. Here 

was something that ought to be 
spang in the center of his official 
territory, and the Thinkers had 
locked him -completely out of it. 
That rocket there — just an ordinary 
Earth satellite vehicle command- 
eered from the Army, but equipped 
by the Thinkers with Maizie-de- 
signed nuclear motors capable of 
the Mars journey and more. The 
iirst spaceship — and the Secretary 
of Space was not in on it! 

Still, he told himself, Mai2ie had 
decreed it that way. And when he 
remembered what the Thinkers had 
done for him in rescuing him from 
breakdown with their mental sci- 
ence, in rescuing the whole Admin- 
istration from collapse he realized 
he had to be satisfied. And that was 

* 

without taking into consideration 
the amazing addition mental dis- 
coveries that the Thinkers were 
bringing down. from Mars. 

"Lord," the iPresident said to 
Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's 

feeling, M I wish you people could 

bring a couple of those wise little 

devils back with you this trip. Be a 
good thing for the country." 

Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. 
"It's quite unthinkable," he said. 
"The telepathic abilities of the 



Martians make them extremely sen- 
sitive. The conflicts of ordinary 
Earth minds would impinge on 
them psychoticaily, even fatally. As 
you know, the Thinkers were able 
to contact them only because of our 
degree of learned mental poise and 
errorless memory-chains. So for the 
present it must be our task alone to 
glean from the Martians their as- 
tounding mental skills. Of course, 
some day in the future, when we 
have discovered how to armor the 
minds of the Martians — " 

"Sure, I know," the President 
said hastily. "Shouldn't have men- 
tioned it, Jorj." 

Conversation ceased. They waited 
with growing tension for the great 
violet flames to bloom from the 
base of the silvery shaft. 

MEANWHILE the question 
tape, like a New Year's 
streamer tossed. out a high window 
into the night, sped on its dark way 
along spinning rollers. Curling with 
an intricate aimlessness curiously 
like that of such a streamer, it tanta- 
lized the silvery fingers of a thou- 
sand relays, saucily evaded the 
glances of ten thousand electric 
eyes, impishly darted down a nar- 
row black alleyway of memory 
banks, and, reaching the center of 
the cube, suddenly emerged into a 
small room where a suave fat man 
In shorts sat drinking beer. 

He flipped the tape over to him 
with practiced iinger, eying it as a 
stockbroker might have studied a 



140 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



ticker tape. He read the first ques- 
tion, closed his eyes and frowned 
for five seconds. Then with the stac- 
cato self-confidence of a hack 
writer, he began to tape out the an- 
swer. 

For many minutes the only 
sounds were the rustle of the paper 
ribbon and the click of the taper, 
except for the seconds the fat man 
took to close his eyes, or to drink or 
pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a 
phone, asked a concise question, 
waited half a minute, listened to an 
answer, then went back to the 
grind. 

Until he came to Section Five, 
Question Four. That time he did his 
thinking with his eyes open. 

The question was: "Does Maizie 
stand for M^elzel?" 

He sat for a while slowly scratch- 
ing his thigh. His loose, persuasive 
lips tightened, without closing, into 
the shape of a snarl. 

Suddenly he began to tape again. 

"Maizie does not stand for Mael- 
zel. Maizie stands for amazing, hu- 
morously given the form of a girl's 
name. Section Six, 'Answer One: 
The ifiid-term election viewcasts 
should be spaced as follows . . ." 

But his lips didn't lose the shape 
of a snarl, 

FIVE hundred miles above the 
ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut 
off its fuel and slumped gratefully 
into an orbit that would carry it ef- 
fortlessly around the world at that 
altitude. The pilot unstrapped him- 



self and stretched, but he didn't 
look out the viewport at the dried- 
mud disc that was Earth, cloaked 
in its haze of blue sky. He knew he 
had two maddening months ahead 
of him in which to do little more 
than that. Instead, he unstrapped 
Sappho. 

Used to free fall from two previ- 
ous experiences, and loving at, the 
fluffy little cat was soon bounding 
about the cabin in curves and gyra- 
tions that would have made her the 
envy of all back-alley and parlor 
felines on the planet below. A 
miracle cat in the dream world of 
free fall. For a long time she played 
with a string that the man would 
toss out lazily. Sometimes she 
caught the string on the fly, some- 
times she swam for it frantically. ' 

After a while the man grew 
bored with the game. He unlocked 
a drawer and began to study the de- 
tails of the wisdom he would dis- 
cover on Mars this trip — priceless 
spiritual insights that would be 
balm to war-battered mankind. 

The cat carefully selected a spot 

three feet of? the floor, curled up on 

the air, and went to sleep. 

JORJ HELMUTH snipped the 
emerging answer tape into sec- 
tions and handed each to the appro- 
priate man. Most of them carefully 
tucked -theirs away with little more 
than a glance, but the Secretary of 
Space puzzled over his. 

4, Who the devil would Maelzel 
be?" he asked. 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



141 



A remote look came- into the eyes 
of the Secretary of State. "Edgar 
Allen Poe," he said frowningly, 
with eyes half-closed. 

The grizzled general snapped his 

fi tigers. "Sure ! Maelzel's Chess 
player. Read it when I was a kid. 
About an automaton that was sup- 
posed -to play chess. Poe proved it 
had a man inside.it." 

The Secretary of Space frowned. 
"Now what's the point in a fool 

question like that?" 

"You said it came from Opper- 
ly' s group?" Jorj asked sharply. 

The Secretary of Space nodded. 

The others looked at the two men 

puzzledly. 

"Who would that be?" Jorj 

pressed. "The group, I mean." 

The Secretary of Space shrugged. 
"Oh, the usual little bunch over at 
the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, 
Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and 
young Farquar.' 1 

"Sounds like Opperly's getting 
senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd 

investigate." 

The Secretary of Space nodded. 
He suddenly looked tough. "I will. 

Right away." 

* 

SUNLIGHT striking through 
French windows spotlighted a 
ballet of dust motes untroubled by 
air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's 
living room was well-kept but worn 
and quite behind the times. Instead 
of reading tapes there were books; 
instead of steno-robots, pen and 
ink; while in place of a four by six 



TV screen, a Picassp hung on the 
wall. Only Opperly knew that the 
painting was still faintly radioac- 
tive, that it had been riskily so 
when he'd smuggled it out of his 
bornb-singed apartment in New 
York City. 

The two physicists fronted each 
other across a coffee table. The face 
of the elder was cadaverous, large- 
eyed, and tender — fined down by a 
long life of abstract thought. That 
of the younger was forceful, sensu- 
ous, bulky as his body, and excep- 
tionally ugly. He looked rather like 
a bear. 

Opperly was saying, "So when he 
asked who was responsible for the 
Maelzel question, I said I didn't re- 
member." He smiled. "They still 
allow me my absent-mindedness, 
since it nourishes their contempt. 
Almost my sole remaining privi- 
lege." The smile faded. "Why do 
you keep on teasing the zoo ani- 
mals, Willard?" he asked without 
rancor. "I've maintained many 
times that we shouldn't truckle to 
them by yielding to their demand 
that we ask Maizie questions. You 
and the rest have overruled me. But 
then to use those questions to con- 
vey veiled insults isn't reasonable. 
Apparently the Secretary of Space 
was bothered enough about this last 
one to pay me a 'copter call within 
twenty minutes of this morning's 
meeting at the Foundation. Why do 
you do it, Willard?" 

The features of the other con- 
vulsed unpleasantly. "Because the 



142 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



Thinkers are charlatans who must 
be exposed," he rapped out. "We 
know their Maizie is no more than 
a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced 
their Mars rockets and found they 
go nowhere. We know their Mar- 
tian mental science is bunk." 

"But we've already exposed the 
Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly 
interposed quietly. "You know the 
good it did." 

Farquar hunched his Japanese- 
wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to 
be done until it takes.'* 

Opperly studied the bowl of mu- 
tated flowers by the coffee pot. "I 
think you just want to tease the 
animals, for some personal reason 
of which you probably aren't 
aware." 

Farquar scowled. "We're the 
ones in the cages."" 

OPPERLY continued his inspec- 
tion of the flowers' bells. 
"All the more reason not to poke 
sticks through the bars at the lions 
and tigers strolling outside. No, 
Willard, I'm not counseling ap- 
peasement. But consider the age in 
which we live. It wants magicians." 
His voice grew especially tranquil, 
"A scientist tells people the truth. 
When times are good — that is, 
when the truth offers no threat — 
people don't mind. But when times 
are very, very bad ..." A shadow 

darkened his eyes. "Well, we all 
know what happened to — M And he 
mentioned three names that had 
been household words in the mid- 



dle of the century. They were the 
names on the brass plaque dedicated 
to the martyred three physicists. 

He went on, "A magician, on the 
other hand, tells people what they 
wish were true — that perpetual mo- 
tion works, that cancer can be cured 

by colored lights, that a psychosis 
is no worse than a head cold, that 
they'll live forever. In good times 
magicians are laughed at. They're a 
luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. 
But in bad times people sell their 
souls for magic cures, and buy per- 
petual motion machines to power 
their war rockets." 

Farquar clenched his fist. "All 
the more reason to keep chipping 
away at the Thinkers. Are we sup- 
posed to beg off from a job because 
it's difficult and dangerous?" 

Opperly shook his head. "We're 
to keep clear of the infection of 
violence. -In my day, Willard, I was 
one of the Frightened Men. Later I 
was one of the Angry Men and 
then one of the Minds of Despai 
Now I'm convinced that all my re- 
actions were futile/' 

"iExactly !" Farquar agreed harsh- 
ly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If 
you men who discovered atomic 
energy had only formed a secret 
league, if you'd only had the fore- 
sight and the guts to use your tre- 
mendous bargaining position to 
demand the power to shape man- 
kind's future . . /' 

"By the time you were born, 
Willard," Opperly interrupted 
dreamily, "Hitler was merely a 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



143 



name in the history books. We sci- 
entists weren't the stuff out of 
which cloak-and-dagger men are 
made. Can you imagine Oppen- 
heimer wearing a mask or Einstein 
sneaking into the Old White House 
with a bomb in his briefcase?*' He 
smiled. "Besides, that's not the way 
power is seized. New ideas aren't 
useful to the man bargainiag for 
power — only established facts or 
lies' are." 

"Just the same, it would have 
been a good thing if you'd had a 
little violence in you." 

"No," Opperly said. 

"I've got violence in me," Far- 
quar announced, shoving himself 
to his feet. 

OPPERLY looked up from the 
flowers, "I think you have," he 

agreed. 

"But what are we to do?" Far- 
quar demanded. "Surrender the 
world to charlatans without a strug- 

gle?" 

Opperly mused for a while. "I 
don't know what the world needs 
now. Everyone knows Newton as 
the great scientist. Few rfemernber 
that he spent half his life muddling 
with alchemy, looking for the phi- 
losopher's stone. Which Newton 
did the world need then?" 

"Now you are justifying the 
Thinkers!" 

"No, I leave that to history." 

"And history consists of the ac- 
tions of men," Farquar concluded. 
"I intend to act. The Thinkers arc 



vulnerable, their power fantastically 
precarious. What's it based on? A 
few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. 
Some science hocus-pocus, on the 
level of those juke-box burlesque 
acts between the strips. Dubious 
mental comfort given to a few 
nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner 
Cabinet — and their wives. The fact 
that the Thinkers* clever stage- 
managing won the President a 
doubtful election. The erroneous 
belief that the Soviets pulled out of 
Iraq and Iran because pf the Think- 
ers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain- 
machine -that's just a cover for Jan 
Trcgarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, 
and that hogwash of "Martian wis- 
dom.' All of it mere bluff! A few 
pushes at the right times and points 
are all that are needed — and the 
Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're 
terrified already, and will be more 
so when they had that we're gun- 
ning for them. Eventually they'll be 
making overtures to us, turning to 
us for help. You wait and see." 

"I am thinking again of Hitler," 
Opperly interposed quietly. "On 
his first half dozen big steps, he 
had nothing but bluff. His generals 
were against him. They knew they 
were in a cardboard fort. Yet he 
won every battle, until the last. 
Moreover," he pressed on, cutting 
Farquar short, "the power of the 
Thinkers isn't based on what 
they've got, hut on what the world 
hasn't got — peace, honor, a good 
conscience . . ." 

The front-door knocker clanked. 



144 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 




trquar answered it- A skinny old 
man with a radiation scar twisting 

at ross his temple handed him a tiny 
cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Wil- 
lard." He grinned across the hall 
< >pperly. "When are you going to 

t a phone put in, Mr. Opperly? 

The physicist waved to him. 
"Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry/ 1 

The old m.m snorted with good- 
humored incredulity and trudged 

off. 

"What did I I ell you about the 
'J Linkers making overtures ?" Far- 
cjuar chortled suddenly. "It's come 
sooner than I expected. Look at 
this/' 

He held out the radiogram, but 

the older man didn't take it. In- 
stead he asked, "Who's it from? 

Tregarron ?" 

"No, from Helmuth. There's 

lot of sugar corn about man's future 
in deep space, but the real reason is 

clear/They know that they're going 
to have to produce an actual nuclear 
rocket pretty soon, and for th 
they'll need our help." 

"An invitation?" 

Farcjuar nodded. "For this after- 
noon." He noticed Oppcrly's anx- 
ious though distant frown. "What's 

the matter?" he asked. "Are you 
bothered about my going? Arc you 
thinking it might be a trap — that 
after the Maelzel question they may 
figure I'm better rubbed out?" 

The older man shook his head. 
"I'm not afraid for your life, Wil- 
lard. That's yours to risk as you 
ihoose. No, I'm worried about 



thei things they might do to you. 
"What do you mean?" Farcjuar 

asked. 

OPPERLY looked at him with 
gentle appraisal. "You're a 
strong and vital man, Willard, with 

a strung man's prides an ; testres." 

I lis voice trailed off for a bit. Then. 

"Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't 

there a girl once? A Mis 

Arkady?" 

Farquar's ungainly figure frozi 
He nodded curtly, face averted. 

"And didn't she go oft with a 

Thinker?" 

"if girls find me ugly, that's 
their business/' Farquar said harsh- 
ly, still not looking at Opperly, 
"What's that got to do with thi 
invitation ?" 

Opperly didn't answer the ques- 
tion. His eyes got more dist.; 
Finally he said, ,f In my day w< 
had it a lot easier. A scientist was 
an academician, cushioned by tra- 
dition." 

Willard snorted. "Science had al- 
ready entered the era of the polio 
inspectors, with laboratory directoi 
and political appointees stifling en- 
terprise." 

"Perhaps," Opperly agreed. 
"Still, the scientist lived the safe 

restricted, highly respectable life of 
a university man. He wasn't ex- 
posed to the temptations of th€ 
world." 

Farquar turned on him. "Are you 
implying that the Thinkers will 
somehow be able to buy me off? 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



14S 



"Not exactly." 

"You think I "11 be persuaded to 
change my aims?*' Farquar de- 
manded angrily, 

Opperly shrugged bis helpless- 
ness. "No, I don't think you'll 
change your aims/* 

Clouds encroaching from the 
west blotted the parallelogram of 
sunlight between the two men. 

AS THE slideway whisked him 
gently along the corridor to- 
ward his apartment, Jorj was think- 
ing of his spaceship. For a moment 
the silver-winged vision crowded 
everything else out of his mind. 

Just think, a spaceship with sails ! 
He smiled a bit, marveling at the 
paradox. 

Direct atomic power. Direct 
utilization of the force of the fly- 
ing neutrons. No more ridiculous 
business of using a reactor to driv 
a steam engine, or 'boil off some- 
thing for a jet exhaust- processes 

•that were as primitive and wasteful 
as burning gunpowder to keep 
yourself warm. 

Chemical jets would carry his 
spaceship above the atmosphere. 
Then would come the thrilling or- 
der, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast 
umbrella would unfold and open 
out around the stern, its rear or 
Earthward side a gleaming expanse 
of radioactive ribbon perhaps only 
an atom thick and backed with a 
material that would reflect neutrons. 
Atoms in the ribbon would split, 
blasting neutrons astern at fantastic 



velocities. Reaction would send the 
spaceship hurtling forward. 

In airless space, the expanse of 
sails would naturally not retard the 
ship. More radioactive ribbon, 
manufactured as needed in the ship 
itself, would feed out onto the sail 
as that already there became ex- 
hausted. 

A spaceship with direct nuclear 
drive — and he, a Thinker, had con- 
ceived it completely except for the 
technical, details! Having strength- 
ened his mind by hard years 
of son mo- 1 earning, mind-casting, 

memory-straightening, and sensory 
training, he had assured himself ol 
the ( Lftive power to control the 
technk tans and direct their spc 
cialized abilities. Together they 

would build the true Mars rocket. 

But th.it would only be- a be- 
ginning. They would build the true- 
Mind Bomb. They would build the 
true Selective Microbe Slayer. They 
would discover the true laws of 
ESP and the inner life. They woufl 
even — his imagination hesitated a 
moment, ihen strode boldly for- 
ward — build the true Maizie! 

And then . . . then the Think- 
ers would be on even terms with 
the scientists. Rather, they'd be tar 
ahead. No more deception. 

He was so exalted 'by this 
thought that he almost let the slide- 
way carry him past his door. I le 
stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" 
He waited a moment, then walked 
through the apartment, but she 

wasn't there. 



146 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



CONFOUND the rid, he could- 
n't help thinking. This morn- 
ing, when she should have made 
h( rself scarce, she'd sprawled about 
sleeping. Now, when he felt like 
seeing her, when her presence 
would have added a pleasant final 
touch to his glowing mood, she 
chose to be absent. He really 
should use his hypnotic control on 
her, he decided, and again there 
sprang into his mind the word — a 
pet form of her name — that would 
send her into,obedient trance. 

No, he told himself again, that 
was to be reserved for some mo- 
ment of crisis or desperate danger, 
when he would need someone to 
strike suddenly and uncjucstioning- 

ly lor hiin.se II and mankind. Caddy 
was merely a •■• id and rather silly 
girl, incapable at present of under- 
standing the tremendous tensions 
under which he operated. When 
he had time for it, he would train 
her up to be a companion 

without hypnosis. 

Yet the fact of her absense had 
a subtly disquieting effect. It shook 
his perfect self-confidence just a 
fraction. He asked himself if he'd 
been wise in summoning the rocket 
physicists without consulting Trc- 
garron. 

But this mood, too, he conquered 
quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, 

but just the Thinker's mosi lever 
salesman, an expert in the rnumbo- 
jumbo so necessary for social con- 
trol in this chaotic era. He himself, 
Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader 



in theoretics and all-over strategy, 
the mind behind the mind behind 
Maizie. 

He stretched himself on the bed, 
almost instantly achieved maximum 
relaxation, turned on the somno* 
learner, and began the two hour 
rest he knew would be desirable 
before the big conference. 

JAN TREGARRON had suppli- 
m en ted his shorts with pink 
coveralls, but he was still drinking 
beer. He emptied his glass and 
lifted it a lazy inch. The beautiful 
irl beside him refilled it without 
a word and went on stroking his 
forehead. 

"Caddy," he said reflectively, 
without looking at her, "there's a 
little job I want you to do. You're 

the only one with the proper back- 
ground. The point is: it will take 
you away from Jorj for some time." 
"I'd welcome it," she said with 
decision. "I'm getting pretty sick 
of watching his push-ups -and all 
his other mind and muscle stunts. 
And that damn somno-lcamcr of 
his keeps me awake." 

Tregarron smiled. "I'm afraid 
Thinkers make pretty sad sweet- 
hearts." 

"Not all o\ them," she told him, 
returning his smile tenderly. 

chuckled. "It's about one of 
those rocket physicists in the list 
you brought me. A fellow named 
Willard Farquar." 

Caddy didn't say anything, but 
she stopped stroking his forehead. 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



147 



"What's the matter?" he asked. 

"You kin w luni once, didn't you?" 
"Yes/' she rep] led and then 

added, with surprising feeling, 
The big, ugly ape '" 
"Well, he's an ape whose serv- 
es we happen to n^cd. I want you 

to be 01 j i contact girl with him." 

She took her hands away from 
his forehead. "Look, Jan," she said 
"I wouldn't like this job." 

"I thought he was very sweet on 
you once." 

"Yes, as he never grew tired of 
trying to demonstrate to me. The 
clumsy, o^ rown, bumbling baby! 
The man's disgusting, Jan. His ap- 
proach to a woman is a child want- 
\g candy and enraged because 
Mama won't produce it on the in- 
stant. I don't mind Jorj — he's just 
a pipsqueak and it amuses me to 
sec how he frustrates himself. But 
Wiliard is . . 

". . . a bit frightening?" Tre- 
garron finished for her. 

"Nor 

"Of course you're not afraid," 
Tregarron purred. "You're our 
beautiful, clever Caddy, who can 
do anything she wants with any 
man, and without whose . . ." 

"Look, Jan, tins is different — " 
she began agitatedly. 

"... and without whose serv- 
ices we'd have got exactly nowhere. 
Clever, subtle Caddy, whose most 
charming attainment in the ever- 
Lpprcciative eyes of Papa Jan is her 
ability to handle c\cry man in the 
neatest way imaginable and with- 



out a trace of real feeling. Kitty 
Kaddy, who . . ." 

"Very well," she said with a 
sigh. "Ill do it." 

"Of course you will," Jan said, 
drawing her hands back to his fore- 
head. "And you'll begin right away 

by getting into your nicest sugar- 
and-ercam war clothes. You and I 
are going to be the welcoming 
committee when that ape arrive 
this afternoon." 

"But what about Jorj ? He'll want 

to see Wiliard." 

"That'll be taken 'care of," Jan 
assured her. 

"And what about the other 
dozen rocket physicists Jorj asked 
to come?" 

"Don't worry about them." 

THE President looked inquiring- 
ly at his secretary across his 
littered desk in his homy study at 
White House, Jr. "So Oppcrly 
didn't have any idea how that odd 
question about Maizie turned up in 
Section Five?" 

His secretary settled his pawn h 
and shook his head. "Or claimed 
not to. Perhaps he's just the absent- 
minded prof, perhaps something 
else. The old feud of the physic 
against the Thinkers may be get- 
ting hot again. There'll be further 

investigation." 

The President nodded. He ob- 
viously had something uncomfort- 
able on his mind. He said uneasily, 
"Do you think there's any possi- 
bility of it being true?" 



148 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



"What ?" asked the secretary 
guardedly. 

"That peculiai hint about Mai- 



zie. 



at 



The secretary said nothing. 

"Mind you, I don't think there 
is," the President went on hurried- 
ly, his face assuming a sorrowful 
scowl. "I owe a lot to the Think- 
ers, both as a private person and as 
a public figure. Lord, a man has 
to lean on something these days. 
But just supposing it were true — " 
he hesitated, as before uttering 
blasphemy — "that there was a man 
inside Maizie, what could we do? 1 ' 

The secretary said stolidly, "The 
Thinkers won our last election. 
They chased the Commies out of 
Iran. We brought them into the 
Inner Cabinet. We've showered 
them with public funds/' He 

paused. "We couldn't do a damn 
thing." 

The President nodded with equal 
conviction, and, not very happily, 
summed up: "So if anyone should 
go up against the Thinkers — and 
I'm afraid I wouldn't want to sec 
that happen, whatever' s true — it 
would have to be a scientist." 

WILLARD FARQUAR felt his 
weight change the steps un- 
der his feet into an escalator. He 
cursed under his breath, but let 
them carry him, a defiant hulk, up 
to the tall and mystic blue portals, 

which silently parted when he was 

five meters away. The escalator 
changed to a slideway and carried 



him into a softly gleaming, high- 
domed room rather like the ante- 
chamber of a temple. 

"Martian peace to you, Willard 
Farquar," an invisible voice in- 
toned. "You have entered the 
Thinkers' Foundation. Please re- 
main on the slideway." 

"I want to see Jorj Helmuth," 
Willard growled loudly. 

The slideway carried him into 
the mouth of a corridor and paused. 
A dark opening dilated on the wall. 
"May we take your hat and coat?" 
a voice asked politely. After a mo- 
ment the request was repeated, with 
the addition of, "Just pass them 
through." 

Willard scowled, then fought his 
way out of his shapeless coat and 
passed it and his hat through in a 
lump. Instantly the opening con- 
tracted, imprisoning his wrists, and 
he felt his hands being washed on 
the other side of the wall. 

He gave a great jerk which failed 
to free his hands from the snugly 
padded gyves. "Do not be 
alarmed," the voice advised him. 
"It is only an esthetic measure. As 
your hands are laved, invisible rad- 
iations are slaughtering all the 
germs in your body, while more 
delicate emanations are producing 
a benign rearrangement of your 

emotions." 

The rather amateurish curses 
Willard was gritting between his 
teeth became more sulfurous. His 
sensations told him that a towel 
of some sort was being applied to 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



149 



!iis hands. He wondered if he 
would be subjected to a face-wash- 
ing and even greater indignities. 
Then, just before his wrists were 
released, he felt — for a moment 
only, but un m i stakabLy — the sof t 
touch of a girl's hand. 

That touch, like the mysterious 
sweet chink of a bell in darkness, 
brought him a sudden feeling of 
excitement, wonder. 

Yet the feeling was as fleeting as 
that caused by a lurid advertise- 
ment, for as the slideway began to 
move again, carrying him past a 
series of depth-pictures and inscrip- 
tions celebrating the Thinkers' 
achievements, his mood of bitter 
exasperation returned doubled. 
This place, he told himself, was a 
.plague spot of the disease of magic 
in an enfeebled and easily infected 

world. He reminded himself that 
he was not without resources — the 
Thinkers must fear or need him, 
whether because of the Maelzel 
question or the necessity of pro- 
ducing a nuclear power spaceship. 
He felt his determination to smash 
them reaffirmed. 

THE slideway, having twice 
turned into an escalator, veered 
toward an opalescent door, which 
opened as silently as the one be- 
low. The slideway stopped at the 
threshold. Momentum carried him 
a couple of steps into the room. 
He stopped and looked around. 

The place was a sybarite's mod- 
ernistic dream. Sponge-carpeting 



thick as a mattress and topped with 
down. Hassocks and couches that 
looked butter-soft. A domed ceil- 
ing of deep glossy blue mimicking 
the night sky, with the constella- 
tions tooled in silver. A wall of 
niches crammed with statuettes of 
languorous men, women, beasts. A 
self-service bar with a score of 
golden spigots. A dcpth-TV-screen 
simulating a great crystal ball. Here 
and there barbaric studs of ham- 
mered gold that might have been 
push-buttons. A low table set for 
three with exquisite ware of crys- 
tal and gold. An ever-changing 
scent of resins and flowers. 

A smiling fat man clad in pearl 
gray sports clothes came through 
one of the curtained archways. 
Willard recognized Jan Tregarron 
from his pictures, but did not at 
once offer to speak to him. Instead 
lie let his gaze wander with an 
ostentatious contempt around the 
crammed walls, take in the bar and 
the set table with its many wine 
glasses, and finally return to his 
host. 

"And where," he asked with 
harsh irony, "are the dancing 
girls?" 

The fat man's eyebrows rose. "In 
there," he said innocently, indicat- 
ing the second archway. The cur- 
tains parted. 

"Oh, I am sorry," the fat man 
apologized. "There seems to be 
only one on duty. I hope that isn't 
too much at variance with your 
tastes." 



ISO 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



She stood in the archway, de- 
mure and lovely in an off-the-bosom 
frock of pale blue skylon edged ia 
mutated mink. She was smiling the 
first smile that Willard had ever 
had from her lips. 

''Mr. Willard Farcjuar," the fat 
man murmured, "Miss Arkady 
Simms." 

JORJ HELMUTH turned from 
the conference table with its 
dozen empty chairs to the two 
rnousily pretty secretaries. 

"No word' from the door yet, 
Master/' one of them ventured to 
say, 

Jorj twisted in his chair, though 
hardly uncomfortably, since it was 
a beautiful pneumatic job. His 
nervousness at having to face the 
twelve rocket physicists — a feeling 
which, he had to admit, had been 
unexpectedly great — was giving 
way to impatience. 

"What's Willard rquax's 

phone?" he asked sharply. 

One of the secretaries ran 
through a clutch of desk tapes, 
then spent some seconds whisper- 
ing into her throat-mike and listen- 
ing to answers from the soft- 
speaker. 

"He lives with Morton Opperly, 
who doesn't have one/' she finally 
told Jorj in scandalized tones. 

"Let me see the list/' Jorj said. 
Then, after a bit, 'Try Dr. Wel- 
come's place." 

This time there were results. 
Within a quarter of a minute he 



was handed a phone which he hung 
expertly on his shoulder. 

'This is Dr. Asa Welcome," a 
reedy voice told him. 

"This is Helmuth of the Think- 
ers' Foundation," Jorj said icily. 
"iDid you get my communication?" 

The reedy voice became anxious 
and placating- "Why, yes, Mr. Hel- 
muth, I did. Very glad to get it 
too. Sounded most interesting. Very 
eager to come. But ..." 

"Yes?" 

"Well, I was just about to hop 
in my 'copter — my son's 'copter — 
when the other note came." 

"What other note?" 

"Why, the note calling die meet- 
ing off." 

"I sent no other note!" 

The other voice became acutely 
embarrassed. "But I considered it 
to be from you ... or just about 
the same thing. I really think I had 
the right to assume that." 

"How was it signed?" Jorj 
rapped. 

"Mr. Jan Trcgarron/' 

Jorj broke the connection. He 
didn't move until a low sound shat- 
tered his aibstra< Lion and he realized 
that one of the girls was whisper- 
ing a call to the door. He handed 

back the phone and dismissed them. 
They went in a rustic of jackets and 

sktrtlets, hesitating at the doorway 
but not quite daring to look back. 

He sat motionless a minu 
longer. Then his hand crept fret- 
fully onto the table and pushed a 
button. The room darkened and a 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



151 



long section of w.ill became trans- 
parent, revealing a dozen silvery 
models of spaceships, beautifully 
executed. He quickly touched an- 
other; the models faded and the 
opposite wall bloomed with an 
animated cartoon that - portrayed 

with charming humor and detail 
the designing and construction of 
a neutron-drive spaceship. A third 
button, and a depth-picture of deep 
star-speckled space opened behind 
the cartoon, showing a section of 
Earth's surface and in the far dis- 
tance the tiny ruddy globe of Mars. 
Slowly a tiny rocket rose from the 
section of Earth and spread its 
silvery sails. 

HE SWITCHED off the pic- 
tures, keeping the room dark. 
By a faint table light he dejectedly 
examined his organizational charts 
for the neutron-drive project, the 
long list of books he had boned up 
on by somno-learning, the con- 
cealed table of physical constants 
and all sorts of other crucial details 
abou t rocket physics — a cl e v erly 
condensed encyclopedic "pony" to 
help out his memory on technical 
points that might have arisen in 
his discussion with the experts. 

He switched out all the lights 
and slumped forward, blinking his 
eyes and trying to swallow the lump 
in his throat. In the dark his mem- 
ory went seeping back, back, to the 
day when his math teacher had told 
him, very superciliously, that the 
marvelous fantasies he loved to read 

152 




GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 




and hoarded by his bed weren't 
real science at all, but just a kind 
of lurid pretense. He had so wanted 
to be a scientist, and the teacher's 
contempt had cast a damper on his 
ambition. 

And now that the conference 
was canceled, would he ever know 
that it wouldn't have turned out 
the same way today? That his 
somno-learning hadn't taken? That 
his "pony"* w.isn t ( ^ood enough? 
That his ability to handle people 
extended only to credulous farmer 
Presidents and mousy girls in skirt- 
lets? Only the test of meeting the 
Cperts would have answered those 
questions. 

Tregarron was the one to blame! 
Tregarron with his sly tyrannical 
ways, Tregarron with his fear of 
losing the future to men who really 
understood theoretics and could 
handle experts. Tregarron, so used 
to working by deception that he 
couldn't see when it became a fault 



and a crime. Tregarron, who must 
now be shown the light ... or, 
failing that, against whom certain 
steps must be taken. 

For perhaps half an hour Jorj 
sat very still, thinking. Then he 
turned to the phone and, aft 
.some delay, got his party. 

"What is it now, Jorj?" Caddy 
asked impatiently. "Please don't 
bother me with any of your moods, 
because I'm tired and my nerves 
are on edge." 

He .took a breath. When steps 
may have to be taken, he thought, 
one must hold an agent in readi- 
ness. "Caddums," he intoned hyp- 
notically, vibrantly. "Caddums 

The voice at the other end had 
instantly changed, become submis- 
sive, sleepy, suppliant. 

"Yes, Master?" 

MORTON OPPERJLY looked 
up from the sheet of neatly 
penned equations at Willard Far- 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



153 



quar, who had somehow acquired 
a measure of poise. He neither 
lumbered restlessly nor grimaced. 
He removed his coat with a certain 
dignity and stood solidly before his 
mentor. He smiled. Granting that 
he was a bear, one might guess he 
had just been fed. 

"You see?" he said. "They 
didn't hurt me." 

"They didn't hurt you?" Opper- 
ly asked softly. 

"Willard slowly shook his head. 
His smile broadened. 

Oppcrly put down his pen, fold- 
ed his hands. "And you're as de- 
termined as ever to expose and 
smash the Thinkers?" 

"Of course !" The menacing 
growl came back into the bear's 
voice, except that it was touched 
with a certain pleased luxurious- 
ness. "Only from now on I won't 
be teasing- the 200 animals, and I 
won't embarrass you by asking any 
more Maelzel questions. I have 
reached the objective at which those 
tactics were aimed. After this I 
shall bore from within." 

"Bore from within," Oppcrly re- 
peated, frowning. "Now where 
have I heard that phrase before?* 
His brow cleared. "Oh, yes," he 
said listlessly. "Do I understand 
that you are becoming a Thinker, 
Willard?" 

The other gave him a faintly 
pitying smile and stretched him- 
self on the couch, gazed at the 
ceiling. All his movements were 
deliberate, easy. 



"Certainly. That's the only real- 
istic way to smash them. Rise high 
in their councils. Out-trick all their 
trickeries. Organize a fifth column. 
Then striker 

"The end justifying the means, 
of course," Opperly said. 

"Of course. As surely as the de- 
sire to stand up justifies your dis- 
turbing the air over your head. All 
action in this world is nothing but 
means." 

Opperly nodded abstractedly. "I 
wonder if anyone else ever became 
a Thinker for those same reasons. 
II wonder if being a Thinker doesn't 
simply mean that you've decided 
you have to use lies and tricks as 
-your chief method." 

WILLARD shrugged. "Could 
<be." There was no longer 
any doubt about the pitying quality 
of his smile. 

Opperly stood up, squaring to- 
gether his papers. "So you'll be 
working with Hclmuth?" 

"Not Helmuth. Tregarron," The 
bear's smile became cruel. "I'm 
afraid that Helmuth's career as a 
Thinker is going to have quite a 
setback." 

"Helmuth," Opperly mused. 
"Morgenschein once told me a bit 
about him. A man of some ideal- 
ism, despite his affiliations. Best of 
a bad lot. Incidcntly, is he the one 
with whom . . ." 

". . . Miss Arkady Simms ran 
off?" Willard finished without any 
embarrassment. "Yes ? that was 



154 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



Helmuth. But that's all going to be 
changed now." 

Opperly nodded. "Good-by, Wil- 
lard/' he said. 

Willard quickly heaved himself 
up on an elbow. Opperly looked 
at him for about five seconds, then, 
without a word, walked out of the 
room. 

THE only obvious furnishings in 
Jan Tregarron's office were a 
flat-topped desk and a few chairs. 

Tregarron sat behind the desk, the 

top of which was completely ban 
He looked almost bored, except 
that his little eyes were smilin: 
Jorj Helmuth sat across the desk 
from him, a tew feet back, erect 
and grim-faced, while shadowy in 
the muted light, Caddy stood 
Inst the wall behind Tregarron. 

She still wore the fur-trimmed sky- 
Ion frock she'd put on that 
afternoon. She took no part in 
the conversation, seemed almost 
unaware of it. 

"So you just went ahead and 
canceled the conference without 
consulting me?" Jorj was saying. 

"You called it without consult 
ing me." Tregarron playfully 
wagged a linger. "Shouldn't do that 
sort of thing, Jorj." 

"But I tell you I was completely 
prepared. I was absolutely sure of 
my ground." 

"I know, I know," Tregarron 
said lightly. "But it's not the right 
time for it. I'm the best judge of 
that." 



"When will be the right time?" 
Tregarron shrugged. "Look here, 
Jorj," he said, "every man shouUl 
stick to his trade, to his forte. Tech- 
nology isn't ours." 

Jorj's lips thinned. "But you 
know us well as I do that we arc 
going to have to have a nuclear 
spaceship and actually go to Mars 
someday." 

Tregarron lifted his eyebrows. 
"Are we?" 

"Yes! Just as we're going to h 
to build a real Maizie. Everythin 
we've done until now have been 
emergency measures." 

"Really?" 

Jorj stared at him. "Look here, 
Jan/' he said, gripping his kaec 
with his hands, "you and I are go- 
ing to have to talk things through/' 

"Are you quite sure of that ?" 
Jan's voice was very cool. "I ha\ 
a feeling thai it might be best if 
you said nothing and accepted 
things as they are." 
No!" 

Very well." Tregarron settled 
himself in his chair. 

"I helped you organize the 
Thinkers," Jorj said, and waited. 
"At least, I was your first partner." 

Tregarron barely nodded. 

"Our basic idea was that the 
time had come to apply science to 
the life of man on a large scale, to 
live rationally and realistically. The 
only things holding the world back 
from this all-important step were 
the ignorance, superstition, and in- 
ertia of the average man, and the 






* i 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



'S5 



stuffiness and lack of .enterprise of 

the academic scientists — their wor- 
ship of facts, even when facts were 

clearly dangerous. 

"Yet we knew that in their deep- 
est hearts the average man and the 
professionals were both on our side. 
They wanted the new world visual- 
ized by science. They wanted the 
simplifications and conveniences, 
the glorious adventures of the hu- 
man mind and body. They wanted 
the trips to Mars and into the 
depths of the human psyche, they 
wanted the robots and the thinking 
machines. All they lacked was the 
nerve to take the first big step — 
and that was what we supplied. 

"It was no time for half meas- 
ures, for slow and sober plodding. 
The world was racked by wars and 
neurosis, in danger of falling into 
the foulest hands. What was need- 
ed was a tremendous and thrilling 
appeal to the human imagination, 
an Earth-shaking affirmation of the 
power of science for good. 

4, But die men who provided that 
appeal and affirmation couldn't 

afford to be cautious. They 
wouldn't check and double check. 

They couldn't wait for the grudg- 
ing and jealous approval of the 

professionals. They had to use 
stunts, tricks, fakes — anything to 
get over the big point. Once that 
had been done, once mankind was 

headed down the new road, it 
would be easy enough to give the 
average man the necessary degree 
of insight to heal the breach with 



the professionals, to make good in 
actuality what had been made good 
only in pretense. 

"Have I stated our position fair- 
ly?" 

rniREGARRONS eyes were hood- 
-L ed- "You're the one who's tell- 
ing it." 

"On those general assumptions 
we established our hold on sus- 
ceptible leaders and the mob/ 7 Jorj 
went on. "We built Maizie and 
.the Mars rocket and the Mind 
Bomb. We discovered the wisdom 
of the Martians. We sold the peo- 
ple on the science that the pro- 
fessionals had been too high-toned 
to advertise or bring into the mar- 
ket place. 

"But now that we've succeeded, 
now that we've made the big point, 
now that Maizie and Mars and 
science do rule the average human 
imagination, the time has come to 
take the second big step, to 1 
accomplishment catch up with 
Imagination^ to implement fantasy 

with fact. 

"Do you suppose I'd ever have 
gone into this with you, if it hadn't 
been for die thought of that second 
big step? Why, I'd have felt dirty 
and cheap, a mere charlatan — ex- 
cept for the sure conviction that 
someday everything would be set 
right. I've devoted my whole life 
to that conviction, Jan. I've studied 
and disciplined myself, using every 
scientific means at my disposal, so 
that I wouldn't be found lacking 



156 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



when the day came to heal the 
breach between the Thinkers and 
the professionals. I've trained my- 
self to be the perfect liaison man 
for the job. 

"J^n, the day's come and I'm 
the man. I know you've been con- 
centrating on other aspects of our 
work; you haven't had time to keep 
up with my side of it. But I'm sure 
that as soon as you see haw care- 
fully I've prepared myself, how 
completely practical the neutron- 
drive rocket project is, you'll beg 
me to go ahead!" 

Tregarron smiled at the ceiling 
for a moment. "Your general idea 
isn't so bad, Jorj, but your time 
scale is out of whack and your 
judgment is a joke. Oh, yes. Every 
revolutionary wants to see the big 
change take place in his lifetime. 
Tcha! It's as if he were watching 
evolutionary vaudeville and wanted 
the Ape-to-Man Act over in twenty 

minutes. 

"Time for the second big step? 
Jorj, the average man's exactly 
what he was ten years ago, except 
that he's got a new god. More than 
ever he thinks of Mars as a Holly- 
wood paradise, with wise men and 
yummy princesses. Maizie is Mama 
magnified a million times. As for 
professional scientists, they're more 
jealous and stuffy than ever. All 
they'd like to do is turn the clock 
back to a genteel dream world of 
quiet quadrangles and caps and 
gowns, where every commoner 
bows to the passing scholar, 



"May-be in ten thousand years 

we'll be ready for the second big 

step. Maybe. Meanwhile, as should 

be, the clever will rule the stupid 

for their own good. The realists 

will rule the dreamers. Those with 

free hands will rule those who have 

deliberately handcuffed themselves 
with taboos. 

"Secondly, your judgment. Did 
you actually think you could have 
bossed those professionals, kept 
your mental footing in the intel- 
lectual melee? You a nuclear physi- 
cist? A rocket scientist? Why, it's — 
Take it easy now, boy, and listen 
to me. They'd have torn you to 
pieces in twenty minutes and glad 

of the chance! You baffle me, Jorj. 
You know that Maizie and the 
Mars rocket and all that are fakes, 
yet you believe in your somno-learn- 

ing and consciousness-expansion 
and optimism-pumping like the 
veriest yokel. I wouldn't be sur- 
prised to hear you'd taken up ESP 
and hypnotism. I think you should 
take stock of yourself and get a 
new slant. It's overdue." 

HE LEANED back. Jorj's face 
had become a mask. His eyes 

did not flicker from Tregarron's, 

yet there was a subtle change in 

his expression. Behind Tregarron, 
Caddy swayed as if in a sudden 
gust of intangible wind and took 
a silent step forward from the wall. 

"That's your honest opinion?'' 
Jorj asked, very quietly. 

"tit's more than that," Tregarron 



APPOINTMENT IN TOMORROW 



157 



told him, just as unrnelodramatical- 

ly. "It's orders/' 

J or j stood up purposef u 1 ly. 
"Very well," he said. "In that case 
I have to tell you that— 1 ' 

Casually, but with no waste mo- 
tion, Tregarron slipped an ultra- 
sonic pistol from under the desk 
and laid it on the empty top. 

"No," he said, "let me tell you 
something. I was afraid this would 
happen and I made preparations. 
If you've studied your Nazi, Fas- 
cist and Soviet history, you know 
what happens to old revolution- 
aries who don't move with the 
times. But I'm not going to be too 
harsh. I have a couple of the boys 
waiting outside. They'll take you 
by 'copter to the field, then by jet 
to New Mex. Bright and early to- 
morrow morning, Jorj, you're leav- 
ing on a trip to Mars/' 

Jorj hardly reacted to the 
words. Caddy was two steps nearer 
Tregarron. 

"I decided Mars would be the 
best place for you," the fat man 

continued. "The robot controls will 

be arranged so that your Visit' to 
Mars lasts two years. Perhaps in 
that time you will have learned 
wisdom, such as realizing that the 
big liar must never fall for his own 

big lie. 

"Meanwhile, there will have to 
be a replacement for you. I have in 
mind a person who may prove pe- 
culiarly worthy to occupy your 
position, with all its perquisites. A 

person who seems to understand 



that force and desire are the motive 
powers of life, and that anyone 
who believes the big lie proves him- 
self strictly a jerk/' 

CADDY was standing behind 
Tregarron now, her half- 
closed, sleepy eyes fixed on Jorj's. 
"His name is Willard Farcjuar. 

You see, I too believe in cooperat- 
ing with the scientists, Jorj, but by 
subversion rather than conference. 
My idea is to offer the hand of 
friendship to a selected few of 
them — the hand of friendship with 
a nice big bribe in it." He smiled. 
"You were a good man, Jorj, for 
Ihe early days, when we needed a 
publicist with catchy ideas about 
Mind Bombs, ray guns, plastic hel- 
mets, fancy sweaters, space bras- 
sieres, and all that other corn. 
Now we can afford a soldier." 

Jorj moistened his lips. 

"We'll have a neat explanation 
of what's happened to you. Callers 
will be informed that you've gone 
on an extended visit to imbibe the 
wisdom of the Martians." 

Jorj whispered, "Oddums." 

Caddy leaned forward. Her arms 
snaked down Tregarron's, as if to 
imprison his wrists. But instead 

she reached out and took the ultra- 
sonic pistol and put it in Tregar- 
ron's right hand. Then she looked 
up at Jorj with eyes that were very 
bright. 

She said very sweetly .\n<\ sympa- 
thetically, "Poor Superman/' 

—FRITZ LEIBER 



158 



GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



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160 GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 



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